AccessMyLibrary provides FREE access to over 30 million articles from top publications available through your library.
Create a link to this page
Copy and paste this link tag into your Web page or blog:
CANBERRA, Feb 28 Asia Pulse - A democratic China could end up wracked by economic turmoil of the same kind which strangled Latin America for much of the modern era, a new report warns.
The study, released today by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), said the United States had long sought to promote democracy in China but it was far from clear a democratic Chinese regime would be benign for American interests.
Report author, US economist and China specialist David Hale, said the current regime remained firmly committed to economic modernisation and market opening which would lead over time to the emergence of a large middle class.
He said an authoritarian China had been highly predictable while a more open and democratic China could produce new uncertainties about both domestic policy and international relations.
"If China had a democratic regime, there is a great risk that the increasing income inequality in the country could produce a populist regime which would suspend economic reform and plunge the country into the kind of inflationary crises which have characterised Latin America for much of the modern era," Mr Hale said in the report.
The potential for trouble is already apparent from the Chinese government's own admission of a seven-fold increase in protest marches in the last 10 years, many by rural people upset about the loss of their land to property developers or urban people concerned about job losses.
Mr Hale said China could become more open and tolerant of dissent when a fifth leadership generation ...
Source: HighBeam Research, DEMOCRATIC CHINA COULD END UP HIT BY ECONOMIC TURMOIL: REPORT.