Noah Feldman, Columnist

China and Xi Challenge the World's Constitutions

An authoritarian government that runs smoothly looks like a viable option. Unless it falters.

October 24, 2017 at 11:23 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Get used to that face.
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The most important constitutional amendment of 2017 isn’t to the constitution of a country: It’s the amendment approved Tuesday to the Constitution of the Chinese Communist Party, which enshrines President Xi Jinping’s “philosophy” alongside the thought of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.

Talk about a sign of the times. Around the world, from Poland to Spain to Turkey, Israel, India and the U.S., constitutional democracy is undergoing a stress test. Buffeted by the forces of nationalism and populism, democratic institutions are struggling. Meanwhile, China, which doesn’t practice constitutional democracy or aspire to it, is trying to demonstrate that it can structure a legitimate government by evolving its own authoritarian structures of control. It’s a risky process, to be sure. But, from the outside, it seems to be proceeding successfully -- and deepening the challenge to constitutional democracy.