Again, it's important to realize that Eric Li's argument boils down to, "If your economy has been destroyed and so you need lots of infrastructure and fixed capital investment, the incentives of your elite (once freed from Marxist ideology so that they can pursue profit) will align with that of your population (allowed to pursue profit in certain limited areas of the economy) for about a generation--that is, the elite will own huge SOE infrastructure and other essential firms, and by building infrastructure and other major things will bring great benefits to everyone while getting super rich themselves." The positive results from CCP governance Li refers to have nothing to do with meritocracy or the flaws with democracy, and everything to do with basic economic incentives. Now that the CCP economic incentives are no longer aligned with those of the Chinese population at large, the issues with human nature--it's largely selfish and short-sighted in most people, unless counterbalanced by competing interests/checks and balances--are coming to the forefront. That is, rather than rebalance the economy by shifting CCP wealth and power to ordinary Chinese to ensure more permanent economic growth and prosperity, Xi has turned to other methods/ideologies plus repression to maintain his absolute power.

That said, if the US continues down its own horrible, increasingly Republican-tribal path, then we will have utterly failed to live up to the promise of liberal values (although those values at least provide a chance for populations to better themselves, unlike CCP "values"). So as William Markle said, it's all about nation building at home right now for the West, starting with things like BLM--can we really make our most oppressed minority equal? It would be amazing if we could and it's both our biggest moral imperative and national security imperative. If BLM actually achieves results, the contrast with the CCP will be stark--our minority has full rights, theirs is in concentration camps. Of course, the US is a long way from full equality for African Americans, but it should be an urgent domestic and foreign policy goal (and of course just a general human goal, among many other ones0.