I have a new long-form essay in the latest Ideas Letter. I wrote a sort of preview piece about it on Substack a couple of weeks ago, and now the full piece is out. It’s about the shift that so many in the West still struggle to name. We’re not merely witnessing China’s “rise” anymore; we’re living through a transformation that challenges the very stories the modern West has told itself about progress, power, and legitimacy. The argument isn’t that liberal democracy has failed, or that China’s system should be emulated. It’s that we can’t begin to renew our own institutions until we honestly acknowledge what China’s achievements mean for the global story of modernity. We need to confront that especially when it challenges our comfortable assumptions.

The essay asks: What happens when modernity is no longer exclusively Western in conception? How should America respond when its assumptions about innovation, governance, and destiny no longer match observable reality?

This “Great Reckoning” is not a geopolitical surrender but an appeal for intellectual honesty. We need to stop explaining away what we see, stop waiting for China’s collapse, and start learning from a world that’s already changed.