Pablo Hiriart
DELPHI, Greece—Two thousand eight hundred years ago, this flat city, situated along the southern slope of Mount Parnassus, began to emerge as a center of pilgrimage for those seeking to satisfy the curiosity that has obsessed human beings of all ages, ethnicities, and latitudes: to know the future.
Even today, the main street that runs through this city of 26,000 inhabitants is filled with a procession of buses and cars carrying people who come to see the remains of the most famous oracle in history, where every Greek polis had an ambassador who interpreted in his own way the ambiguous prophecies of the god Apollo.
The sun beats down, but there are a few trees to provide shade, turn on your cell phone—the internet connection is perfect—in front of the ruins of the oracle, and ask two questions: Will democracy survive? Will China dominate the world?
I hear the voice of philosopher Fernando Savater, whom I previously interviewed at his home in Madrid: “Democracy is not going to disappear. The problem with democracy is not so much external totalitarianism, but rather that within democracy, those who have come to power do not believe in democratic institutions. We are seeing people who adopt democratic forms and positions, but without believing in them or only believing in them to the extent that it suits them.”
Is the poor quality of democracy the fault of the politicians who govern us?
–Democracy is a system in which the blame for what happens lies with the democrats, that is, the citizens. Because they are the ones who vote, they are the ones who do not remove those in power, they are even the ones who do not offer to govern if they believe they could do better than those who are currently in power. In a democracy, you can no longer blame anyone else. In a democracy, we are all politicians. And those who are now acting as politicians are doing so because we have sent them to govern, because we have told them to act as politicians. So, if they do a bad job, then we, who elected them, have done an even worse job, says Savater.
Facing the frontispiece of the temple of Apollo, I ask the same question to the human intelligence condensed into billions of pieces of data, known as “artificial intelligence,” our portable oracle. I get an answer: “Western values—freedom, human dignity, individual rights—were born to resist totalitarian power, and they have done so for centuries. They have overcome absolute monarchies, empires, fascism, and communism. Today, despite internal cracks, they are the moral and cultural benchmark to which millions outside the West aspire.“
It continues: ”The power of democracies lies in their capacity for alliances, innovation, and cooperation. While authoritarian regimes isolate themselves or sustain themselves through fear, free societies reinvent themselves. Their strength lies in civil society, entrepreneurial creativity, and the freedom to dissent. “That is why democracy will not die. Because its enemies depend on control and fear, while it thrives on freedom and conscience. It may falter, it may enter into crisis, but it always resurfaces.”
China is a colossal adversary of democracy and Western values. Will it be able to sustain its regime and impose an international order without human rights, free voting, free expression, and human dignity as a relative value?
Italian intellectual and journalist Andrea Rizzi argues in The Age of Revenge that the Chinese Communist Party’s power is based on “a tacit pact sealed with the citizenry: prosperity in exchange for the renunciation of freedom.”
Thomas Friedman, a journalist and writer, discusses China’s tactics in international trade… The world will not allow China to manufacture everything and only import soybeans and potatoes… Over time, this will generate a global alliance against it… Such an unbalanced economy is unsustainable… youth unemployment stands at 17 percent… The government’s priority for Communist Party ideology and state-owned industries is driving some of China’s most talented innovators in the private sector to quietly move their money, their families, and themselves to Japan, Dubai, and Singapore…”.
There is concrete evidence of its growing weaknesses: China is experiencing an aging population. Its population fell for the third consecutive year in 2024, according to the AP. In 2024, official debt reached 60.9 percent of GDP. Still, the real figure—including hidden liabilities—exceeds 124 percent, according to OMFIF (“China raises its debt ceiling,” March 2025), an independent think tank based in London and Singapore.
Debt platforms (LGFVs), which are financial entities created by local governments in China to finance public projects—such as infrastructure, housing, and transportation—without the debt officially appearing in local budgets, have accumulated trillions of dollars, with $800 billion at risk of default.
The most significant blow: failed chip factory projects – the “zombie factories” – wasted between $50 billion and $100 billion in public and private investment without results, according to Tom’s Hardware (“Zombie factories slow China’s chip-making ambitions,” June 27, 2025).
Key technology remains in Western hands. Xi Jinping’s regime controls, but does not create.
China scored just 9 out of 100 on the Global Political Freedom Index (Freedom House, World Report 2025 on Freedom).
Repression, documented by Human Rights Watch (“China: Internal Repression and Centralization of Power,” January 2025), has stifled talent, entrepreneurship, and creativity.
According to the Critical and Emerging Technologies Index, which compares 25 countries, the United States maintains global leadership in critical technologies.
Its advantage, it says, is based on a decentralized innovation ecosystem, massive investment, and talent attraction, which allows it to “pool knowledge and scale innovations like no other country.”
The study highlights that the United States’ advantage in chip manufacturing, design, and tools is underpinned by technical and capital capabilities that China has yet to match.
Washington dominates the space sector, thanks to its public-private partnerships, which have increased the number of launches and reduced costs. According to the index, this advantage reinforces its power vis-à-vis China and Russia, whose advances do not yet threaten US leadership.
The report warns that this dominance depends on sustaining investment in research and cooperation with allies.
In other words, if Trump does not end up strangling its “Athens”—that is, its universities and research centers—and does not blow up its relationship with its allies and refrain from eroding democratic governments in Europe, China will not succeed in imposing its global will.
What does the portable oracle in my hand say as I stand before the columns of the temple of Apollo? “China’s power is real, but its limits are deeper than its ambitions.”
The oracle that processes some 500 billion pieces of data using algorithms and the one erected by the Greeks are equally ambiguous. You have to know how to read them. Be careful not to make a mistake.
Croesus, the ambitious king of Lydia, sent to Delphi to ask what would happen if he attacked Persia in 560 BC. Apollo’s answer, through Pythia, his priestess, was: “If you attack Persia, you will destroy a great kingdom.”
He launched the attack, was taken prisoner, and a great kingdom was destroyed: his own.
Almost two centuries later, the Athenians asked here what was the best way to defend themselves against the Persians, who were approaching with their troops led by Xerxes, the son of Darius. The answer was that Athens would be saved by its wooden walls. Themistocles corrected the Athenians who were preparing to build the wall with wood from their forests: “What Apollo says is that the wooden wall that will save Athens is our ships.”
Thus, Athens defeated the powerful Persian navy in the Strait of Salamis and saved, for its glory and for the good of humanity, democracy, philosophy, theater, and equality before the law.
The key, then and now, lies in correctly interpreting the oracle. The one before my eyes, or the one in the palm of my left hand. (End of the series from Greece)
Further Reading: