Dear Mr. Skapinker,
Thank you for your article in todays Financial Times.
Couple of things I find amusing in your article - "Successful economies depended on the free exchange of ideas. Innovation came from the clash of competing products and services with consumers free to choose the best"
Just to give you one example, I don't see that in the sports television in UK - where Sky dominates not by any innovation but by having the sole rights. If your remarks are true then the way sports should be auctioned is have 2-3 networks the ability to show the games with superior commentary team or HD close-up views/replays or ability to watch the highlights online etc can be called as innovations to attract and keep customers. But that doesn't happen.
Secondly, in the Western world less than 50% people on average vote. Where is the universal suffrage?
Finally, though you have passingly mentioned that India is an imperfect democracy - the fact is democracy is actually the bane of India in practical terms. I know this sounds as if I'm somebody from an communist era but that is not true. In the present day India, 40% of the country is run by Naxalites. The government has no control whatsoever. Due to frequent elections, the politicians gets elected and pay themselves and their cronies off and then they give way to the next lot all in the name of Democracy.
The fact is Democracy in Western style is OK for one set of conditions i.e., good physical infrastructure, educated population etc., For the poor parts of the world, the Chinese model is what works. We have been seeing the Chinese miracle for the last 20-30 years up-close. Nobody can deny it. Yes, there needs to be a common denominator to deal with West for the Chinese & other third-world countries but setting the rules for the common denominator is not the way ahead. That is where most of the Western commentators go wrong. The key is to understand them with an open mind. Comparing communist Russia with present day China is as misleading as comparing the world's largest democracy (India) with the richest (USA).
Regards,
Pradeep Kabra
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Too early to write off democracy in China
By Michael Skapinker
Published: January 25 2010 20:41 | Last updated: January 25 2010 20:41
At the South African university I attended during the apartheid years, several of my fellow students disappeared during the night. Taken away by the police, they were held in solitary confinement, without access to lawyers, family or reading matter, for weeks and sometimes for months. A few were tortured.
Yet, being white, we were mostly a lucky bunch. We enjoyed an excellent standard of living and a fine education. There was anxiety about who at the university might be police informers, but for us, the security apparatus was never as all-enveloping as it was either for black South Africans or for those living in communist dictatorships.
But the experience left me with an enduring commitment to democratic government and the rule of law, and a horror of unaccountable authority.
Both apartheid and Soviet communism have, happily, collapsed and South Africa has, equally happily, opted for parliamentary constitutionalism over the communism of many of apartheid’s opponents.
More than 50 years ago Richard Nixon, then US vice-president, and Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, argued in a mocked-up American kitchen in Moscow about whose system was superior. By the time the Soviet empire imploded in the late 1980s, the answer was obvious.
Democratic countries were better. Not only were their people freer; they were more prosperous.
How could they be otherwise? Successful economies depended on the free exchange of ideas. Innovation came from the clash of competing products and services, with consumers free to choose the best.
A successful economy was also impossible without an independent legal system, which ensured that people’s property, both physical and intellectual, could not be stolen by criminals or government cronies.
Yet democracy was not easy. Russia may no longer be communist but it is hardly a model democracy either. Iraq and Afghanistan are proof that democracy cannot be imposed from outside.
Nor does it always produce the expected results. As a letter writer pointed out in the Financial Times on Friday, democracy is viewed as dysfunctional in the Philippines and has failed to produce stability in Thailand.
Run your eye down the list of wealthiest countries as measured by gross domestic product per capita. Alongside democracies such as the US, Switzerland, Austria and Canada are less-than-democratic Qatar and Brunei, as well as semi-democracies like Hong Kong and Singapore.
Does this invalidate the economic case for democracy? Not entirely. Qatar and Brunei would not be there without oil and gas. Hong Kong and Singapore inherited their legal institutions from Britain. They are rare examples of the rule of law co-existing with less than vigorous political systems. Their model is even harder to emulate than full-blown democracy.
Look at it another way. The countries that achieve scores of more than 90 per cent on both the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators “voice and accountability” and its “rule of law” ratings are all prosperous (although one, Iceland, is admittedly in serious trouble). Most of those scoring below 20 per cent on both are deeply impoverished.
What of countries on the way to becoming prosperous? Of the Bric countries, two – India and Brazil – are democracies, albeit imperfect ones. During a visit to Brazil last year I met many people who pointed to the country’s democracy as a key to its progress. As for Russia, it is heavily dependent on oil and gas exports and some have said it does not really belong in the Bric group.
It is China, now the world’s third largest economy and tipped to become the largest by 2041, that is the democrat’s biggest challenge. Unlike the Soviet Union, it appears to have found a way to lift millions out of poverty while still locking up its dissidents. Many have pointed toChina’s clash with Google over censorship as evidence that the country will not become more democratic as it prospers.
Perhaps, but this story has a long way to run. China may, within the next few decades, become the world’s biggest economy, but it will take far longer for it to have the world’s richest people. Measured by per-capita gross domestic product, International Monetary Fund estimatesput China behind Armenia in 2008.
It was the Chinese leader Zhou Enlai who, asked for his assessment of the French revolution, is reputed to have said that it was too early to tell. Whether he actually said it or not, it is certainly too early to tell what the consequences of China’s economic revolution will be.
Perhaps the Chinese people will be content, one day, to be rich and unfree. But the hunger for liberty is strong, and it is not confined to any time or place.
Send your comments to michael.skapinker@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/skapinker
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Dear Pradeep,
Many thanks for your email.
I take many of your points, but if, as you say, for poorer countries, it's the Chinese model that works, where are the other examples of the Chinese model (one party dictatorship, semi-market economy) working?
Regards,
Michael
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Dear Mr. Skapinker,
Then what is the way ahead?
Presently all the 'rogue' nations are either shunned or lectured by the West which makes no difference whatsoever to the final outcome. What China is doing is building the platform for the Chinese model by starting to build their infrastructure without worrying about human rights or proper way of doing things.
I'm pretty sure once the infrastructure is set and the population doesn't go to sleep hungry, then they aim to get educated. The so-called political freedom is bound to follow.
Hopefully you will focus on few of these issues in your future articles.
Regards,
Pradeep
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