Good column, destor. And congratulations on landing a paying day job. To lessen the disconnect, is it too much to ask that you dye Mr. Maiello's hair blond? He can keep his shirt on.

Interesting, your Daily voice is so much different from your blog voice. I like both, just struck by the difference.

I'm not certain that economic growth breeds democracy, but I have to say that I'm unconvinced by your counterexamples. China, U.A.E. and others demonstrate that dictatorships can be economically robust, but the fascists already proved that long ago.

The question is not whether dictatorships can grow but for how long they can grow. We don't have enough history of long-running, economically robust dictatorships to say one way or the other.

The longest lasting example you cite, Pinochet's 27 years in power, is overstated. Chile's economic recovery began in 1975, but it remained erratic until the early 1980s. In 1989, Pinochet lost power in a popular referendum, and Patricio Aylwin, an opponent, replaced him. Pinochet remained head of the military until 1998, but he was no longer running the country. So we're really only talking about seven years of steady growth before democratic elections.

But Snopes says it's actually not true that Mussolini made the trains run on time.

First of all, congratulations on the op-ed gig, Destor!

Secondly, great piece, lots to think about.

Thirdly ... a minor criticism - it'd be nice if we could cut and paste, I wanted to comment on a couple of passages...

For instance, I was struck by this: "The Western dream is that China's growing middle class will demand political power. But the very economy fueling the growth of the middle class is also empowering the existing undemocratic regime". 

Why exactly does the West *dream* about this? (I don’t deny that we do, I just wonder why we do.) If the Chinese are happy with how things are being run with the current setup, why is that a source of distress for Westerners, exactly? I'm not sure if this is a deeply profound question or a really stupid question, but let me know...

We wouldn’t, say, want Saudi Arabia’s “growing Islamist population to demand political power” and institute hard-core Sharia law, right? Americans really aren’t very wedded to the idea of self-determination for others in its own right, as present events sadly show. It is a dream we have only about those people who walk around in white collar suits just like us, who we imagine share our values and outlook on life. It’s them we want to take power. So is it just that we dream about them taking over because they are like us? Or because we dream and wish and hope that they may become more like us? (After all, they will be the new superpower, so if they’re very different, life might get unpleasant).

Beyond that, I find the assumption underlying your thought to be a bit odd. You seem to assume that their middle class is losing political power to some nebulous ‘regime’ just as that regime subversively dulls their senses by throwing money at them. Like it is some kind of devious bait-and-switch played by the CCP. When we think of undemocratic regimes, we think of Kim Jong Il-type despots, unyielding, distant and at least partly mad insofar as they identify-slash-confuse the nation's good with their own private interests. China's regime is, imo, nothing like that. It is definitely a form of government that we find foreign, based on a value-system we find foreign (i.e. not so interested in individual rights and freedoms), which leaves us quite queasily uncomfortable with the idea that it might be sustainable, and worse, it might become the dominant power in the future. And there is a cognitive dissonance in the last sentence of yours I quote above, that seems based on a strange set of assumptions: you imply that it is a *problem* that the success of the current regime is empowering it. Isn't that what should happen in a meritocracy? Shouldn't a government be strengthened by implementing successful policy? Shouldn't the growing middle class indeed be happy about that success?

You seem to be suggesting that this growing vibrant middle class is somehow getting screwed in the process. I don't quite get your worry here. Is it that one day, all the wealth of the middle class will disappear and they will turn around and realize they have no power as well? If so, then you really have faulty assumptions about the direction the Chinese political system is taking, and the growing power of the broader middle class - through the local branches of the CCP, through the People's Congress (which is much more powerful than it used to be), through the increasingly influential academic sphere and the ever-powerful civil service (by the by, both independent from the CCP structure). The rising Chinese middle class have a vast and growing amount of political power, too much in my view relative to that of the oppressed class of migrant workers. Their system of government and power dynamics just doesn’t operate in a way recognizably similar to the American bi-annual ostentatiously melodramatic Red V Blue election ritual.

The stability of the Chinese political system rests on its ability to adapt to a quickly changing country and a quickly changing world (think the power vacuum left by the US on the world stage, energy and commodity shortages, and so on). It rests on whether it can provide for its citizens and govern according to their values. That might of course somehow be related to whether they have a one-party system or a multi-party system. But I see no reason to think why (it doesn't seem as sclerotic as the US system, for instance). And I see no reason why they should want anything like what the US has. The latter is demonstrably incapable of adapting to changing circumstances and of sensitivity to the public’s needs and desires (though it still is more sensitive to the public’s Rights, which is different).

In general, I think you’re wrong to question whether economic development leads to political reforms, where the latter is conceived of as less corruption and abuse, more individual freedom and better rule of law. The two tendencies – development and reform – go hand in hand, forming a virtuous circle of positive feedback. China is both developing and reforming, but it is just not moving towards anything recognizable as a US-style liberal democracy. Which, imo, is fine. The existence of multi-party elections is far from the most important institution in a well-functioning political system, often serving just to paper over more fundamental flaws.

The issue is more that when US businesses invest in countries run by dictators, they will often be uninterested in the economic development of the countries in question. They are merely seeking to extract – literally or figuratively – whatever value already exists in that country, not trying to build up any further value within the country. And dictators tend to be willing accomplices in that enterprise. Which is why most Asian countries post ’98 have opted for a growth strategy without foreign capital investment (leading to the current US whining about ‘imbalances’). Of course now the issue of whether ‘US businesses’ ought to invest in dictatorships is really moot. The current crop of US-based multinationals have no national allegiance, they are as uninterested in the economic development of the US itself as they are in the development of developing countries. They have managed to decouple profit-growth from economic growth more broadly. That is the problem which now faces all countries.