Although political systems that involve a plurality in decision making are not new, the idea of truly universal suffrage is; it first appeared in New Zealand in 1893, arrived in Britain 1928, and was not fully implemented in the United States until the Voting Rights act of 1965. Universal suffrage is thus a relatively new model of governance and has been evolving in the century since its adoption and it may be too early to tell whether Churchill's observation "that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time" is indeed correct. China is currently pitting that assertion to the test.
Many have argued that for the US to retain its role as the worlds leading power, it must continue to support the rules based order, and by extension must nurture the international coalition of allies and partners it has built since the Second World War. Its ability to introduce Judaeo-Christian values as a component in international relations is a major contribution to civilization writ large, replacing the amorality of great power politics. Yet this ability to project values is waning.
During the Cold War, the American model was widely seen as superior to the juxtaposed alternative, Communism, which was philosophically flawed ("the end justifies the means") and demonstrably inferior in practice. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the US model was assumed to have won by default ; but that model had two components, once though to be inseparably intertwined; democracy and the prosperity attributed to free markets. China has shown this not to be the case.
The emerging Chinese model demonstrates that democracy is not essential for free markets, a rising middle class, declining rates of poverty and increasing wealth. At the same time, the US is finding that political deadlock and polarization is hampering long term strategic initiatives essential to maintain its economic leadership in the world, specifically a failure to maintain, let alone renew, crumbling infrastructure, declining investment in education, and the starving of funds for initiatives to promote research and development. It has also failed to evenly share the gains from globalization which has resulted in stagnation and even decline in prosperity for a significant proportion of the population.
American style democracy is increasingly widely being viewed as less effective in generating prosperity, when compared to the Chinese model; freedom, it might be argued, is of little import when you can't put food on the table. And it is not only the US that is struggling with the unintended consequences of universal suffrage. Look no further than Brexit, the shift to the right in Hungary and Poland, all of which challenge the globalists' view of a rules based order.
As universal suffrage becomes increasingly associated with poor economic outcomes and national economic decisions that do not benefit the plurality, the perceived attractiveness of America Style democracy will decline relative to the Chinese free-market one party system. As China continues to rise economically, and extend its soft power in the developing world, so will support for its system and by extension its values. There will come a point at which the majority of countries see China rather than the US as the exemplar system. As countries reforming their political system in the developing and the developed world look for models, it seems likely that they will adopt variants of the Chinese model rather than the US model, and universal suffrage will not be embedded in those reforms. Saudi Arabia, for example is currently reforming its monarchy-based system; but a model in which power remains fairly concentrated will clearly be more attractive to Mohammed bin Salman, than a democratic republic. And if China has show us anything it is that people will put up with what the West characterizes as human rights violations in return for order, predictability and prosperity.
\When the Chinese model comes to be broadly viewed as the exemplar, it will over time become the most widely adopted system of governance; and democracy, like Communism before it will be seen in the reviewed mirror of history as an interesting, but ultimately failed, experiment.
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