By Sierra Rayne ——Bio and Archives--May 1, 2015
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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) ... Mr Rowen bases his optimism on the numbers. By 2020, he reckons, China's GDP per person at 1998 purchasing-power parity [PPP] 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.In 1998, Cuba's per capita GDP-PPP was $7,630 -- and it was certainly not free. There appears to have been 68 nations above a $7,500 per capita GDP-PPP base in 1998, including the non-free countries of Iran, Iraq, Brunei Darussalam, Saudi Arabia, and the rest of the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. Now we appear to see an even larger number of non-free nations well past this $7,500 GDP-PPP in 1998 dollars benchmark (adjusted using 2011 constant dollar per capita GDP-PPP), including Albania, Ecuador, Egypt, Jordan, China, Algeria, Turkmenistan, Thailand, Iraq, Russia, Iran, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Lebanon, Belarus, Venezuela, Gabon, Kazakhstan, Equatorial Guinea, Brunei Darussalam, and -- of course -- the rest of the Persian Gulf states. Collectively, these wealthier non-free countries make up 30 percent of the global economy and are home to 2.1 billion people, and these numbers are growing rapidly. The notion that there is a threshold above which authoritarian nations would democratize is attractive, but our experience since the end of the Cold War suggests this view is too simplistic and results in a risky foreign policy stance for the West. It is time for a rethink.
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Sierra Rayne holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry and writes regularly on environment, energy, and national security topics. He can be found on Twitter at @srayne_ca