China is a dictatorship. The midterms will prove if the US has also become one

November 3, 2026 — 5:00am

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.

Remove items from your saved list to add more.

No gift articles left

You've used all of your gift articles. 3 more will become available on the 1st of every month.

The Chinese Communist Party’s internal discipline agency last week posed this question: “Why is there order in ‘China’ and disorder in the ‘West’?”

The contrast between China’s big political event last week and America’s big political event this week could not be more stark. The fifth plenum of the party’s 20th Central Committee was choreographed down to the last bottle of black hair dye. The hundreds of committee members in their identikit suits stood in unison, clapped in unison, raised their hands to vote in unison.

The main item on the agenda? The need for rigorous discipline within the party – “to forge iron one must be strong oneself”. The vote in favour? Unanimous. And the cadres voted to “strictly implement democratic centralism”. Got that? Democratic centralism. You can have all the democracy you want so long as it’s centralised. In the form of Xi Jinping. All those against?

The media coverage was every bit as varied, vibrant and enthralling. The 12 main Chinese daily newspapers all carried the identical two photographs across the top of their front pages, one a close-up of Xi Jinping looking statesmanlike, the other a wide shot of the members meeting in the Jingxi Hotel.

Across the top of every paper was the identical headline: “The Communist Party of China has held the Fifth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee in Beijing”. And below was straight-faced reporting of the 4000-word plenum communique, including breakthroughs such as this: “It was unanimously agreed that the Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core demonstrated tremendous political courage and a strong sense of responsibility........

© The Sydney Morning Herald