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On Dec. 23, China put Liu Xiaobo, a staunch Chinese proponent of democracy, on trial for "subversion." The next day, the court convicted Liu Xiaobo and sentenced him to 11 years in prison.

The move was, the New York Times reported, "a sign that Chinese leaders are reducing their already limited tolerance for peaceful political dissent."

In those two days, the point was made -- talk of democratization and moral assimilation by repressive, authoritarian regimes is for Western ears only. And the practice has become routine.

Yawn; tell us something we don't know, right? Wrong. There is a component to this issue that threatens democracy -- even that which already exists -- the world over.

This threat is detailed in crystal clear terms by James Mann, author-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. Mann's book, "The China Fantasy: Why Capitalism Will Not Bring Democracy to China," is a study in thoughtful contrarian scholarship that balances, then debunks, the boilerplate diplomatic hypnotism American leaders often use to put the press and the public in a trancelike state when asked about the advancement of freedom in decidedly undemocratic nations with whom we like to be on good terms.

"Integration": No matter how you define it, Mann writes, it amounts to the Western belief that by bringing China into the global community, its leaders will not be able to interact economically with the world without importing democratic ideals and exporting concessions.

But the strategy of integration, Mann writes, raises the obvious question: Who's integrating whom?

"Is the United States now integrating China into a new international economic order based upon free market principles?" Mann asks. "Or, on the other hand, is China now integrating the United States into a new international political order where democracy is no longer favored and where a government's continuing eradication of all organized political opposition is accepted or ignored?"

It sounds outlandish at first, but Europe's slide into an overregulated bureaucratic Frankenstein's monster proves Paul Rahe's dictum that soft despotism is, indeed, democracy's drift.

That drift can be overcome by a strong-willed citizenry and dedicated leadership, but unless you pull in the opposite direction, you'll float the wrong way down the lazy river of diminishing freedom. If current trends continue, that's the new world order.

Don't think China is strong enough yet to push the United States around? Mark Lynas would beg to differ. Lynas is a climate change correspondent for the U.K. Guardian newspaper, and he attended the Copenhagen conference on manmade global warming. Those hopeful that Copenhagen would result in a multinational agreement on progressive action with the intention of curbing anthropogenic climate change were sorely -- to put it lightly -- disappointed.

But Lynas was in the room for all the negotiations, and wrote a blistering column for the Guardian describing how China intentionally destroyed the negotiations to guarantee President Barack Obama took the blame for yet another Western "failure."

"China's strategy was simple: block the open negotiations for two weeks, and then ensure that the closed-door deal made it look as if the West had failed the world's poor once again," Lynas writes. "And sure enough, the aid agencies, civil society movements, and environmental groups all took the bait. The failure was 'the inevitable result of rich countries refusing adequately and fairly to shoulder their overwhelming responsibility,' said Christian Aid. 'Rich countries have bullied developing nations,' fumed Friends of the Earth International.

"All very predictable, but the complete opposite of the truth."

The Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, refused to attend the crucial Dec. 18 meeting, sending a foreign ministry gopher to sit opposite Obama (who was seated with Prime Minister Gordon Brown and other heads of state, plus U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon). Several times during that session, they all waited while the Chinese delegate left the room to phone his superiors.

China then stripped out all the emissions targets for industrialized countries, followed by the removal of all other meaningful numbers from the deal. Lynas speculates as to why China would do this, but concludes with the more significant realization that concern over the Copenhagen failure should take a backseat to why it failed.

"Copenhagen was much worse than just another bad deal, because it illustrated a profound shift in global geopolitics," Lynas writes. "This is fast becoming China's century, yet its leadership has displayed that multilateral environmental governance is not only not a priority, but is viewed as a hindrance to the new superpower's freedom of action."

A "shift" in China's favor, garnering China's leaders more freedom so their people can have less.

The Chinese leadership just demonstrated that the strategy of "integration" -- across the board, not just with China -- is headed for a failure that will dwarf the amateur-night debacle at Copenhagen. Unless we have the resolve to paddle upstream, get ready to drift. Prepare to be integrated.

Seth Mandel is the managing editor of The Jewish State.