China is only One Party Away from Democracy

Thirty years ago in China there was no competition. Even in 1988, when I first visited China, there was very little competition. But after a failed experiment with Marxism, the Chinese started in the late 80s a much more successful trial of Ricardean economics and…it worked. China as we all know has been growing at a sustained of over 8% per year for 15 years in a row and is now the main consumer of most of the world´s commodities. Now that the Chinesehave  experimented with competition in business with such enviable results I believe that it is a matter of time until China experiments with competition in politics.

If we think about it, America is only one political party ahead of China. What would be the easiest way for China to democratize? To go the American way and have a political scene in which most people believe in the same system and disagree slightly on tactics to achieve its objectives. The US has Democrats and Republicans. China could soon have the Communists, and Liberals, one party would be more of an advocate of “dirigisme” the other more of “laissez faire”. The whole world seems to be divided along these lines and I believe that in the next 20 years, so will China.

• China
• Democracy
• politics
• USA