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Ironically, China's economy is said to be hurting now, that might not be cause and effect of course.  It would be interesting to figure which country was hurt the most by COVID.

China may well be fcked. they have a population crisis on their hands, a phony real estate bubble that makes anything here look like child's play, and their entire economy and country really was built on being the worlds low cost manufacturer, and well it's not so low cost to manufacture there anymore.

tariffs + rising costs to manufacture +  the CCP's COVID fiasco = flight from China.

US/EU multi-nationals have all been trying/planning to pivot production away from China for some time, and that's starting to gain traction and COVID accelerated it a bit. I mean Apple is just now starting to build iPhone's in India for christ sake, and that company was the biggest foreign multi-national ball-licker of China/CCP on planet earth. More and more foreign based multi-nationals are just going to pivot manufacturing to Vietnam, India, Thailand, Mexico, etc., over time.

The term "democracy" often is used as a very broad meaning that includes more than a pure democratic system.

hopefully, the CCP screwed up in the checkers game

their handling of COVID pissed off enough of the world that it will tank their economy and set them back 100 years

I think we have a clue, at least, but perhaps not much for certain.

China sets GDP target of 'around 5%' for 2024 (cnbc.com)
China sets GDP target of 'around 5%' for 2024 (cnbc.com)

China: estimated GDP growth 2024 | Statista

I'm not sure a "huge amount" has pulled out of China.  A lot of their issues appear to be based on real estate, perhaps more than manufacturing (folks are shifting production to cheaper countries, which always happens).  If they truly have a 5% growth rate (???), it's pretty solid even if not what they claimed to be having in the past.

China’s economy is becoming a drag on global growth | Chatham House – International Affairs Think Tank

Chinese households are gloomy to a large degree because the value of their main asset, namely property, has been suffering losses for a considerable time now. Real estate prices across 70 cities have been falling consistently since April 2022, hardly conducive to a ‘positive wealth effect’ that might encourage households to go out and spend.

Quote
Employment prospects are bleak, largely because Chinese firms seem unwilling to invest.

The result is that China is at the edge of a deflationary trap: consumer price inflation has been negative in four of the past six months. This risks turning into a self-reinforcing spiral if households postpone purchases in the hope that prices continue to fall – a dynamic that isn’t helped by China’s falling population.
 
While it’s true that retail sales rose 7.2 per cent for the whole of 2023, this should be seen as a kind of failure: apart from 2020 and 2022, two years badly affected by COVID-related lockdowns, that growth rate is the weakest China has seen since 1999.
 

I recall that the governor here "reopened" what many thought was too early, and was criticized for it rather widely.  Even so, most places stayed closed of their own volition.  Even where places did not lock down, the economy went south.

I agree with you on what's happening, but disagree that COVID was all that much of a cause. This trend has been happening for MUCH longer than that.

You all know my belief on it, so I'm not going to belabor the point--we now live in a country where people curate their news/media/socials to surround themselves with a nice little cocoon of confirmation bias. They never expose themselves to "the other side", and learn everything about "the other side" from their own. It's a VERY small step from that to viewing "the other side" as not their countrymen but their enemy. Especially when their own side fans those flames by teaching them to fear and hate the other side.

COVID just amplified it a bit.

2000 election.