By Liu Lingling, People’s Daily

Francis Fukuyama, the American political scientist best known for his “The End of History” thesis, recently acknowledged in an interview with Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that if China continues along its current development trajectory, the predictions he made about the country four decades ago will have proven incorrect.

This is not the first time Fukuyama has adjusted his views. In April, speaking on a podcast, he remarked that China had developed a highly distinctive model and that it could potentially become a viable alternative to Western democracy.

Such statements are particularly striking coming from Fukuyama. His shift, from firmly viewing Western liberal democracy as the ultimate destination of human political development to acknowledging that China’s model may offer an alternative path, represents more than a personal academic reassessment. It reflects three broader shifts taking place in today’s world.

First, reality has repeatedly challenged “The End of History” thesis.

Fukuyama’s theory emerged in the aftermath of the Cold War, when many in the West believed their political system had achieved a decisive victory and represented the final stage of political evolution.

More than three decades later, however, the societies where history was supposedly “over” have hardly become models of lasting stability. Instead, many have faced deepening political polarization, social fragmentation and persistent governance challenges. Reality has increasingly revealed the limitations of the “The End of History” narrative.

As Singaporean scholar Kishore Mahbubani recently wrote in the South China Morning Post, “The West was never the whole world. It is time to move on.”

Second, Chinese modernization has demonstrated remarkable resilience and vitality.

Over the past several decades, China has completed, within a few decades, the industrialization process that took developed Western countries centuries — achieving development accomplishments that have attracted worldwide attention. By pursuing a modernization path suited to its own national conditions, China has created a new form of human advancement.

From a country once plagued by poverty and underdevelopment to the world’s second-largest economy, and from bare subsistence to moderate prosperity in all respects, China’s achievements