The US, once the global benchmark of modernity and progress, has descended to the point where a senior Australian federal government official told me that it was a mistake to study the US election in the same framework as an Australian election: “Look at the US as if you are looking at a Third World country with deepening social and economic inequality overlaid by diminishing trust in institutions, and where the institutions are increasingly politicised.”On the other hand, China, after visiting the pandemic on the world, has the disease under control, its leader protected, and has started to distribute hundreds of thousands of doses of an experimental vaccine. We cannot trust China’s official mortality rate of three deaths per million. But even if the real figure were one hundred times worse, China would still have a fatality rate less than half America’s.At every turn, Donald Trump provides ammunition for China’s claim to better government.Credit:APAnd we cannot trust Beijing’s experimental vaccine. But it is determined to match or beat the West in finding one. It has four vaccine candidates in phase three trials, which is the final stage of testing, so the full effects are not yet known.A vaccine developed by Sinovac has had little attention in the West, but in the countries where it is conducting its trials – Indonesia, Turkey, Brazil – it has got a lot more notice. Indeed, Indonesia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Retno Marsudi, has said that “the clinical trials have run smoothly with good results”. Sinovac has promised to give 40 million doses to Indonesia by March next year.And, stretching the definition of “emergency use”, Beijing reportedly has allowed its state-owned Sinopharm to distribute its vaccine candidate to some 350,000 people in China and is preparing to issue it yet more widely. Priority is given to people who need to travel abroad, such as aid workers and business people.Is it irresponsible for China’s authorities to allow a vaccine to be handed out before its phase three trials are finished? Yes, it is. Is it an effective way of pushing the pace in its contest with the West and getting attention in other countries? You bet. The West may yet triumph in the quest for a vaccine, but whoever wins will attain a lot of bragging points. Even more influential will be which country can not only come up with a vaccine but distribute it widely around the world. This is what China’s President Xi Jinping promised – once again – in his virtual address to the UN General Assembly last month while ignoring Donald Trump’s complaints about the “China virus” at the same forum.Illustration: Dionne GainCredit:SMHThis is the culmination of a contest of models – China versus the US – that China has been promoting for over a decade. In 2009, after the US had led most of the Western world into banking failures and economic collapse, the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily boasted of China’s economic success and editorialised: “The ‘China model’ has created miracles, opened a unique path of development and superseded the belief in a superior ‘American model’, marking its demise.”A year later Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state at the time, agreed that China held considerable appeal for many countries: “There are those who look at China and say, ‘Well, gosh, they’re growing at 9, 10 per cent a year and they’re keeping the lid on’. And if you’re an authoritarian mindset … then that might be attractive,” she told me in an interview.Since then, three game-changing events have taken place. First, a newly ambitious Chinese leader, Xi, took power in Beijing and offered dozens of countries easy access to a trillion-dollar chequebook otherwise known as the Belt and Road initiative. Second, a newly disruptive US leader, Trump, took power in Washington and sabotaged global public goods – he insulted and punished many US friends and allies, pulled America out of a major Asia-Pacific trade deal, withdrew from the Paris climate accord. And he undercut liberty everywhere with his refusal to commit to democracy as America’s way of choosing its leaders.Illustration: Andrew DysonCredit: Suddenly, the supposed leader of the free world shared a great deal in common with the leader of the world’s most repressive major power. Trump’s “aversion to liberal internationalism, indifference to democratisation and human rights, belief in great power diplomacy, and preference for personal deal-making between leaders, chimes with Xi’s own approach”, writes a non-resident fellow at the Lowy Institute, scholar Bobo Low.At the same time, “Trump’s actions, and personal venality, have undermined transatlantic unity and the moral authority of the West”. And third, the coronavirus struck. It has become, as Lo calls it, “a metaphor for the collapse of governance”. Not everywhere, but certainly in the US.China did itself great harm in the eyes of the world with its initial cover-up of the pandemic. But it seems that no failure is so bad that Trump can’t find a way of trying to compete. While telling Americans that the virus was “going to disappear” and would “all work out fine”, he admitted to journalist Bob Woodward in February that “I wanted always to play it down”, supposedly to avoid panic. So America now had its own cover-up to compete with China’s.LoadingThe Chinese Communist Party represents a ruthless repressiveness, the most enduring and successful dictatorship in modern history, pioneering new tech-enabled ways of crushing the human spirit in the name of preserving the party’s power.But just now it’s hard to see exactly what the US represents. Trump makes it a lot easier for Xi to portray China’s model as the better option. Perhaps Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, caught it best when he described working in the White House: “We’re in crazytown.”Trump Biden 2020Our weekly newsletter will deliver expert analysis of the race to the White House from our US correspondent Matthew Knott. Sign up for The Sydney Morning Herald’s newsletter here, The Age’s here, Brisbane Times’ here and WAtoday’s here. Peter Hartcher is political editor and international editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Most Viewed in WorldLoading