Waiting for Democracy

Many analysts say China is disproving a long-standing assumption in the West that democracy follows economic liberalization. They say China’s rapid economic growth has helped its communist regime bolster its political legitimacy and stalled much-needed democratic reforms in China.

Ever since Deng Xiaoping launched major economic liberalization in the late 1970s, inaugurating an era of extraordinary economic growth in China, many Western observers argued that political reform would follow.

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Chairman of the Department of Politics at New York University says the assumption that economic growth produces an educated, capitalist middle class that demands control over its own fate has not been the case in China. He points out, “When Deng announced his economic reforms, the standard view in the West was that China was quickly going to become a different, democratic kind of country. It’s now 27 years since those reforms were put into place. And there is no evidence of any meaningful change in the way governance is done in China.” Read more.