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A growing crop of developing nations, however, suspect that they are no more bound to play pawns than the medieval West was fixed below its later station. While it is conventional to mark China out as a leader, it is useful to substitute Russia or India if only to oust the notion that China is the sole culprit of an order that seeks to delegitimize a globalism molded by the West.
Since the student movements of the 1960s, Western academia has historically welcomed the prospect of an upheaval. Such enthusiasm, however, was fuelled by an assumption that rising powers would possess a leftist character as befitted many a postcolonial legacy. Yet the trailblazers are rarely scorned naifs but civilization-states that are run as electoral autocracies. These include China, Russia, India and Iran where Zhonghuaism, Eurasianism, Hindutva ideology, and Shi’ite messianism reign.2 Each state considers the connection between liberalism and development superficial or negligible making concessions to the West unnecessary.
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