The rich scent of freedom

The Economist: The rich scent of freedom

Will a wealthier China become less authoritarian?

FOR Americans, the psychological tremors of a Chinese moon walk could coincide with another shock. Some time in the next 20 years, if China’s growth stays on course, its economy will overtake America’s to become the largest in the world.

By the 2020s China’s middle class, today in its toddler phase, will be striding into maturity. And by 2050, some economists predict, China’s economy will be double the size of America’s at current exchange rates. As with China’s space efforts, there will be less to this than meets the eye. In 2020 income per person in America will still be four times China’s, and vast swathes of the Chinese countryside will look much the same as they do now.

The numbers may say little about the relative strength of China and America, but they will raise big questions about China itself. With the growth of a middle class, many observers have long believed, the country’s politics will change too. Henry Rowen of Stanford University has predicted that by 2020 Freedom House, an American NGO, will rate China as “partly free” in its annual country rankings (putting it in the same category as relatively open but not fully democratic societies such as Singapore and Hong Kong). Freedom House currently rates China as “not free”, one of 42 such countries in 2009.

For China, which routinely imprisons dissidents, heavily censors the media, bans any opposition to the Communist Party, bars citizens from electing the country’s leaders and officially allows religious activity only in places of worship controlled by the government, this would be a big step forward. Mr Rowen bases his optimism on the numbers. By 2020, he reckons, China’s GDP per person at 1998 purchasing-power parity will be over $7,500. In 1998 all but three of the 31 countries above this level of GDP per person were rated as free. People who live in rich countries (oil-rich ones notably excepted) generally enjoy high levels of political rights and civil liberties, Mr Rowen concludes.

But what if he is wrong? …

I heard Mart Laar, former prime minister of Estonia, speak a few years ago. He said the biggest threat to the world's future is China, not terrorism. Two bad scenarios are possible. One is that China increases its economic influence, and there is internal pressure for greater political freedom. Hardliners react and end up debilitating China's economy. The worse scenario is that they succeed in becoming a dominant power while suppressing political reform.