(Special) The wrong apocalypse — democracy! Yawn.

As the US reckons with systemic racism and a less-than-democratic past, China is doubling down on its authoritarian ways. Meanwhile, research on the health of democracy from across the globe indicates the patient is not well.

In episode five of the third season of “Things That Go Boom,” our partner podcast from PRX, host Laicie Heeley traces China’s rise from the 1990s, when American pop music held a place alongside patriotic education, to its more recent political assertiveness — not to mention its chokehold on civil rights in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. As China moves to assert itself on the world stage, is democracy losing?

Guests:

• Connie Mei Pickart, writer and educator
• Yascha Mounk, associate professor at Johns Hopkins University and senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund

Additional reading:

• How the world views American-style democracy, Eurasia Group Foundation
• Nationalism ruined my Chinese friendships, Connie Mei Pickart via SupChina
• In Hong Kong, defiance has gone quiet, The New York Times