Introduction
The stereotypical US citizen loves their country. Also in China there seems to be a collective patriotic ghost among the people. You'd think this patriotism leads to a stronger united people, yet, in the US it seems to have a converse effect.
The effect of patriotism
Patriotism leads to fanaticism. A strong conviction in certain ideals, the norms and values of your nation. In the US it seems to become such a strong belief, that its logic even surpasses that of science. Or in a symbolic way:
politics > science
People start believing the world they think it to be, without trying to take a step back and looking at it from a more neutral objective point of view. If sciectific results don't match the ideals, they are fake, bad or corrupted. If they do, science is used as an argument.
Patriotism in a democracy
Now we come to the juicy part. The US has the unique combination of devoted patriotism and being "the country that fights for democracy in the world". People follow the nation's ideals and believe in them as being a religion. These ideals are reflected in only two political parties and thus the fanaticism for the nation translates to fanaticism for a political party. This is what splits the people, what leads to a narrow worldview, disbelieve of scientific results or the media and spiraling conspiracy theories.
It becomes a beautiful paradox: by loving the nation so much, you actually destroy it. This becomes even more painful if we take into account the conservative liberal nature of the US: the fear of a dystopian communist world is very much alive among its citizens. An example: the world of Orwell's "1984", where people are spoon-fed "facts" through a corrupt mediasystem, where history is rewritten by calling past events lies and critical thinking is disapproved as you should follow what the leader says... A couple of things the US managed to bake into their society by following their democracy in an idealistic way - without even coming close to communism, LMAO!
In China this whole "politics > science" imposes less of a problem. The same equation might still hold, but there is less division among the people since there is no political choice (and thus no choice between idealistic views). This makes China scary in a totally different way: a united people following a constructed worldview controlled by one party. But, the people are united because of the lack of democracy, and this makes China strong.
In Europe most people don't love their nation enough to love a political party and as a result will not take the word of politicians above that of scientists. Ofcourse this is an exaggeration as US trends like "fake news" or disbelieving the media are massively spreading to Europe. As a result more and more coocoo Europeans are sprouting from left and right. All in all we could say this division among Europeans is more contained as there are more political parties (read: more idealistic systems to choose from) and less love for these parties. The democracy is stable, but looked at in a critical view instead of fighting for it.
Disclaimer
As a European citizen I am extremely biased and am not claiming one of these world powers to be "better" than another. Nonetheless China and the US scare me. I have used no sources for this article, as it is just a brain figment.
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Day Brake