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For the first time since 2001, a majority of all states worldwide are no longer under democratic rule, Democracy Without Borders said in its 2020 Varieties of Democracy report published by researchers based at the University of Gothenburg. And with Hungary, there is for the first time an EU member state classified as autocratic.

They call it the third wave of autocracy. The first was the rise of fascism leading to World War II. The second was the consolidation of the Soviet empire in the 1960s and 70s.

Is the sad state of democracy today not enough to bring a tear to the eye? By far the worlds most successful autocracy is its biggest. The Chinese Communist Party is the most enduring dictatorship in modern history. It is also the most formidable by far, whether judged by its economic, diplomatic, military or technological power.

And the Peoples Republic is the only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system, in the words of Americas Blinken.

Bidens decision to convene the first summit of the Quad was not so much an effort to contain China, as if that were even possible. It is more an attempt to save democracy.

I do want to acknowledge, Campbell told me, that the subtext of all of this, of course, is the challenge that China presents and each of the countries in the last year in their own way has faced profound and unnerving challenges from Beijing. Fear of, and frustration with, Beijing has drawn the four together.

Chinese President Xi Jinping.Credit:AP

Bidens America also is now confronting China as the leader of a system, not just as a single country. One of the defining differences between China and America is that the US stands at the centre of an alliance network of some 40 nations, including its European and Asia-Pacific treaty allies. China has no allies but a ragtag of vassal states that, on a good day, could include Pakistan and North Korea.

Donald Trump discarded this key asset. Trumps America was not really America First but America Alone. Now Biden is reviving the alliance system, more like America Plus.

The clearest early illustration is that the US is presenting itself to Beijing as the representative of an alliance bloc. As Campbell told me last week: We are not going to leave Australia alone on the field subject to Chinas economic coercion. We have made clear that the US is not prepared to improve relations in a bilateral and separate context at the same time that a close and dear ally is being subjected to a form of economic coercion.

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Beijing is unhappy at this new American solidarity with allies. A spokesperson for Chinas Foreign Ministry taunted in a tweet: Interesting. The US is now switching from America First to Australia First?

Top US officials meeting their Chinese counterparts on the weekend in Alaska spoke in defence of all US allies against Chinese pressure and aggression. With the Quad, the US brings India into its democratic circle although as partner rather than ally.

As Blinken had said earlier, we will engage China from a position of strength. Trump believed that allies were a liability; Biden believes they are an asset.

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The threats to democracy, as Trump showed, are not exclusively outside the democratic states. Division, corruption, prejudice, inequality, social media and the authoritarian impulses of democratic leaders themselves are all enemies of democracy, lurking within.

Indeed, a former Trump spokesman, Jason Miller, said on the weekend that the former president will soon make a social media comeback on a new platform of his own creation. Its enough to make anyone a bit emotional.

Peter Hartcher is international editor.

Peter Hartcher is political editor and international editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

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Tears and fears in Quads bid to preserve democracy - Sydney Morning Herald