Global financial crisis: gift to China, authoritarians of Southeast Asia?

Some Asian societies have grown quite prosperous despite a lack of freedom and democracy. In the wake of the global crisis, will this trend continue?

Anthony Milner, Basham professor of Asian history at the Australian National University, was a participant in the International Press Institute World Congress which I blogged back in June.

This week, writing in The Age, Milner expounds on a familiar theme. The Asian Financial crisis of 1997, he writes, had some largely unanticipated outcomes:

The geopolitical consequence of that earlier crisis, it has been observed, was a stronger, more confident China. Out of that crisis also developed a new, more exclusive, somewhat anti-West, Chinese-influenced Asian regionalism.

Milner speculates that the current global financial crisis may well serve to further reinforce this trend:

In Thailand, Malaysia and South Korea, countries hit hard in 1997-98, the crisis tended to confirm longstanding distrust of the West. Commentators from the West predicted the Asian crisis would puncture the whole "Asian values" and "Asian authoritarianism" discourse. What happened was that authoritarian structures tended to be kept in China, Singapore and Malaysia. In the Philippines and Thailand, elected governments have been removed. In a recent Foreign Affairs article, Larry Diamond referred to an international "democratic recession".

What will be the impact of the current global crisis on such trends? There is an influential view that China (and perhaps much of Asia) will come out of this crisis stronger vis-a-vis the rest of the world. . . .

If economic success and freedom do not go hand in hand, must one continue to come -- seemingly -- at the expense of the other in Southeast Asia?

I think Indonesia's experiment with democracy will be particularly important to think about. Miller notes that despite democracy, Indonesia remains very corrupt and one hears the "argument things were better, at least in economic terms, under dictator Soeharto."

All true. But on my visits to Indonesia I have found that Indonesians tend to be remarkably optimistic about the future, accepting of foreigners, and enthusiastic about having the opportunity to vote. The country is blessed with a healthy labor movement (photos, right) an enterprising young populace, and a free media (including a vibrant blogging community). In Indonesia, religious life -- often perceived in an overly negative light -- provides a counterweight to the authority of the state. As a consequence, civil society in Indonesia may prove far more resilient to any downturn than some of the more authoritarian countries of ASEAN or China.

What we don't know -- what has not been tested -- is how well today's economically successful but authoritarian states will manage to weather a severe global recession. This time authoritarian countries may not find it so easy to export their way to recovery; sufficient local demand for consumer goods may not prove forthcoming. Just yesterday, a mob of angry Chinese workers beat to death a steel company executive. Last week saw an uprising of the Uighurs.

In Southeast Asia, Anwar Ibrahim, ever a clear voice for democratic values, seems poised to take make the best of any future government fiasco. In Thailand, it's not clear whether the militarist-royalist clique will remain united in the absence of the country's long-serving and highly revered monarch. Although Vietnam's fake communist regime, like the impostor Marxist party to the north, has gone unchallenged, these regimes have been able to take credit for steadily rising living standards. Yet all such "authoritarian success stories" in Asia have coincided with an American security umbrella and strong outside support for a liberal world trade order.

With sunshine and water, any seed can grow -- but only for a time. It's not clear to me that any of Asia's most authoritarian regimes have the roots to weather a global storm.

We should not overlook the fact that it was the financial crisis of 1997 that afforded Indonesians an opportunity to shake off dictatorship, giving birth to Indonesian democracy. Similarly, this time round, any one of Asia's hitherto successful authoritarian regimes could be the next to fall.