Xi Jinping’s slow-motion nosedive from China’s throne is less a political drama than a masterclass in how to botch a nation. Beijing’s strongman, once hailed as the eternal helmsman, is now steering a ship that’s springing leaks faster than his censors can plug them. Economic wobbles, public grumbling, and a leadership drunk on its own myth expose the rot of hyper-centralised rule.

But this isn’t just China’s circus—democracies, with their messy debates and fragile guardrails, can stumble into the same traps if they’re not vigilant.

Picture a cautionary tale, served with a smirk and a shiver, as we unpack why China’s mess is a 900-word warning for every democracy to keep its house in order. Buckle up; the lessons are sharper than the Beijing’s People’s Liberation Army.

China’s last decade under Xi has been a textbook case of building a throne on quicksand. He didn’t just seize power; he vacuumed it up, scrapping term limits, turning anti-corruption drives into rival purges, and cloaking himself in a personality cult so palpable it makes North Korea’s propaganda look like a shy adolescent. Xi didn’t stop at rewriting the constitution—he mandated a university course on ‘Xi Jinping Thought’, a self-aggrandising syllabus that’s less education and more hagiography.

Imagine the gall: a leader so enamored with himself he demands a nation study his brilliance, as if wisdom begins and ends with his name. The economy, meanwhile, is a shimmering mirage—state-fuelled projects and a property bubble ready to pop.

Now, the cracks are glaring: youth unemployment’s through the stratosphere, exports are wheezing, and the property sector’s less a market than a graveyard of bad loans.

Xi’s zero-Covid obsession, once paraded as genius, turned into a bureaucratic fever dream—lockdowns so suffocating they sparked protests in a country where dissent is a one-way ticket to nowhere. When citizens took to the streets,........

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