Over the past 35 years, the number of democratic nations around the world has increased relentlessly. It all started in western Europe in the 1970s with the fall of authoritarian regimes in Greece, Spain and Portugal. The movement spread through east Asia and Latin America in the 1980s, with the coming of democracy to South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Brazil and Argentina. The fall of apartheid in South Africa in the 1990s was accompanied by the spread of electoral democracy in much of the African continent. The most dramatic breakthrough of all came with the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989.
Ever since the end of the cold war, political discussion in the west has tended to treat this chain of events as much more than just a happy accident. For many analysts it was the proof not just of the widespread desire for freedom, but also of the intrinsic superiority of liberal democracy as a political system. As Ronald Reagan put it, “freedom works”. Countries that embraced democracy would succeed economically. Authoritarian regimes were doomed to failure.
An added layer was added to this optimistic theory with the coming of the “information revolution” in the 1990s. It was widely argued – by figures as diverse as Rupert Murdoch and Bill Clinton – that in the new “knowledge economy”, only democracies that allowed the free flow of ideas would ultimately thrive. This belief made it much easier for the US to take a relaxed attitude to the rise of China. According to the theory, either China would become a democracy, or it would fail economically.