Keith B. Richburg is the director of the University of Hong Kong Journalism and Media Studies Centre and a former Post correspondent. Lately, there have been two contradictory messages coming out of China. They have both been used to explain the Chinese leadership’s view of the country’s rivalry with the United States and the political makeover underway in Hong Kong, which just held carefully controlled elections for a new pro-Beijing local legislature. The first message is that Western democracy is dead or dying and that China’s top-down, centrally directed socialist system is the model of the future. According to this...