Humiliation of Western Economists: How China Refuted Basic Liberal Theories

Last week, the Sakharov Center and the German Sakharov Society held a discussion on the super-topical topic "Authoritarianism Comes and Wins". Within its framework, Professor of the Free University Tatiana Vorozheikina spoke about the Chinese model of authoritarianism and its impact on the countries of Latin America.

Among other things, the expert explained how China was able to refute the seemingly unshakable liberal theories:

“The experience of China's development in the last 40, and especially in the last 20-25 years, seriously undermines the foundations of the liberal theory of modernization in the form as it has been established in the last 50 years. Modernization theory is based on two main postulates.

The first fundamental liberal idea is that successful economic development based on private property, where the market is the main economic regulator, is impossible without democracy, political competition, change of government, and an independent court that guarantees property rights.

There are no institutions of political democracy in China. It is an authoritarian, and in some dimensions still a totalitarian regime, which exercises effective political control over the population.

Nonetheless, for over 40 years now, China has been developing economically to the highest degree. Persistently high rates of economic growth are accompanied by the deepest structural transformation. From a backward, poor, agrarian country, China is turning into the second or, according to other calculations, the first economy in the world. China's economic position increasingly determines the state of the world economy, including raw material and energy prices.

Since 2000, China's contribution to the global growth rate has been higher than that of the United States and 50% higher than that of India, Brazil and Russia combined. This gap is growing. The annual GDP growth in China from 1978 to 2012 averaged over 9% per year. This is an unprecedented phenomenon in world economic history. No other Asian country during the period of rapid development reached such rates and did not maintain them for a third of a century. Economic growth was accompanied by an increase in prosperity, a way out of poverty for tens of millions of people. In terms of per capita income and purchasing power parity, China has moved from the category of poor countries to the category of moderately developed countries during this period.

The second fundamental liberal idea is that successful market-based economic transformation will steadily lead to the democratization of the political system. In contrast, in China, sustained economic growth and profound social transformation over 40+ years have not led to any noticeable democratization. The political system remains authoritarian, one-party. After the only political crisis associated with a massive demand for democracy (the events of 1989 in Tiananmen Square), China witnessed a fairly effective change of undemocratic turnover of power within the framework of one party for 2 decades. There was no democratization in China. Since 2012, with the coming to power of Xi Jinping, China has returned to the model of one-man irremovable power. There is now a leader who relies on increasing ideological, political and social control.

China has successfully undermined the foundations of modernization theory, and this could not but affect the perception of the relationship "economic growth - political democracy - social progress." The Chinese experience breaks this link. Therefore, to discuss the onset of authoritarianism in the modern world without China is to move away from the central core of this problem..."