Western societies pride themselves as abiding by the rule of law, and it is an important ideal IMO, but the application in reality is more on a Bell curve.
I agree that the rule of law is a nice ideal, but there appears to be an emerging split between the effectiveness of rule of law systems and their proposed values.
The historical arguments were not just that the rule of law is ethical, but also that it is effective at delivering for its citizens. So when the OP points to murder rates or the article points to atrocious health standards that fall below even middle-income trap countries, then that doesn't exactly fill me with optimism.
If that's the definition then, um, yeah, I think "bell curve" is a very diplomatic term for the de facto reality in Western Nations. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the de facto reality in all nations, Western or not, falls well short of this rule of law ideal.
I've no evidence to support the following suspicion, but I think whenever humans are involved in a system, all of those well known human failings we have are going to manifest themselves in that system's output. I don't think there is a way around it actually.
In practice, there probably is no society governed by rule of law if equal treatment is going to be your measuring stick. I honestly don't think such a place exists.
Thing is, the current Chinese government sees “rule of law” completely undesirable as a concept, judiciary must acquiesce to the official class (which is synonymous with the party), whose opinion is the only one that matters.
Since we've gone down this rabbit-hole, doesn't that mean or infer that the states is no longer a "rule of law" country, since the current idyllic seems to be overturning laws - based purely on political alignment (e.g.: the "sudden rash" of states banning abortion because the end-goal is to overturn Roe v. Wade)?