In June 1987, a group of world leaders met in Venice to plan global economic policy for the 21st century. The leaders represented seven of the eight wealthiest countries in the world; the Soviet Union was excluded.
Addressing the summit, US president Ronald Reagan described the Soviet Union as an example of “how not to run a country”. But he was less hostile towards China, which was then the world’s ninth-largest economy, just ahead of Spain.
At the time, China’s leader, Deng Xiaoping, was credited with overseeing a “second revolution” and introducing “sweeping economic reforms that have challenged Marxist orthodoxies” – as Time put it when naming him person of the year in 1985. If Deng’s reforms work, the magazine predicted, “the world will not be the same”.
In Venice, Reagan told his fellow democratic leaders that Deng’s reforms marked “the first taste of freedom for over 1 billion people”. Citing the spread of economic and political liberalisation across Asia, Africa, and Central and South America, Reagan declared: “We look around the world and we see freedom is rising.”
But that tide has turned. Today, autocracy, not democracy, is rising, and the new US president describes his Chinese counterpart as a “thug”. Wealthy western nations no longer confront a spluttering Soviet economy: the competition for global power and commerce is with China, the world’s second-largest economy, on track to become the biggest by 2028. Of the globe’s 20 wealthiest countries, China was the only one whose economy grew in 2020. China’s spectacular ascent has allowed its leaders to assert that one-party rule is crucial to its domestic growth and stability. “We considered them, tried them,” said Xi Jinping in 2014, of political systems such as multi-party democracy, “but none worked.”
Xi now confidently presents China as a model for others. The world’s largest trading nation is partnering with other countries to develop ports, roads and infrastructure through its Belt and Road Initiative, and is planning to become a leading global technology supplier.
In recent years, as China has ascended, the US and the European Union – the beacons of liberal democracy – have faltered. The global financial crisis of 2007-08 damaged Washington’s global economic leadership. Its political divisions – culminating in the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and the breach of the Capitol in 2021 – damaged its global democratic leadership.
The European Union has faced a debt crisis, a refugee crisis and, most recently, the departure of Britain, its second-wealthiest member.
There are now, for the first time since 2001, more autocratic states in the world than democracies. The 2020 annual report by Freedom House, a US government–funded organisation, found that 2019 marked the 14th consecutive year of decline in global freedom: “Dictators are toiling to stamp out the last vestiges of domestic dissent and spread their harmful influence to new corners of the world,” it said.
The Covid-19 pandemic – and Washington’s and London’s tragic mishandling of it – gave China an opportunity to promote the success of its heavy-handed governance model in suppressing the virus, even after it had tried to cover up the outbreak.
Early last year, Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vučić, welcomed medical help from Beijing by kissing the Chinese flag and asserting that Serbians, no longer able to rely on the European Union for support, must instead depend on China.
More recently, China has been distributing vaccines and promising access to countries including Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Turkey.
For Australia, the world’s autocratic turn has been confronting.
Australia did not have a place at the Venice summit in 1987, but it did not need one. Instead, it viewed a US-led world order as best for its economic and security interests, and it tried to exercise international influence by remaining close to Washington.
The challenge for Canberra policymakers is not just that this old order is ending, but that the driving force behind the change is China, a country so crucial to Australia’s future in Asia. Australia can and should resist the rising tide of authoritarianism, but it must also be aware of the consequences of doing so.
Defending democracy, and condemning Chinese brutality and repressiveness in Xinjiang or Hong Kong, can carry a cost – as Australia’s barley, beef and wine producers have learned. Pushback against China and others should be careful and strategic. Australia needs a plan.
Beyond resistance, Australia must adapt. It needs to consider what a China-led globe will look like, the ways in which Beijing is likely to use its growing influence and how a country such as Australia can protect and promote its interests in a shifting world order. This does not mean appeasement, but recognising, understanding and adjusting to the new global reality.
• Jonathan Pearlman is editor of Australian Foreign Affairs. This is an edited extract from Australian Foreign Affairs 11 – The March of Autocracy on shelves Monday 22 February
