How do we know that CCP and Xi will NOT survive this? Maybe the system they adopt there, just maybe, is the best system handle situation like this? With all the digital surveillance, AI, and all those new technologies, an authoritarian regime may now have the tools to outperformed the western counterpart?
That would be pretty frightening. There is a hypothesis out there that climate change might ignite an authoritarian regime geared toward counting climate change. Seeing that a mass surveillance program the size of whatever China has cooked up works to contain a biological outbreak and counter a catastrophe might help ignite such a thing.
History doesn’t simply repeat itself, it rhymes.