A report on the state of democracies worldwide reveals that China is becoming an increasingly repressive regime, in a region of the planet where totalitarianism has been consolidating.
The latest Global State of Democracies 2021 report from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), to be launched today at a public event, shows that only 54% of people in Asia and the Pacific Ocean live in a democracy and almost 85% of those people live in a fragile or regressing democracy.
The document from this Stockholm-based institute – which analyzes the democratic performance of 173 countries since 1975 and seeks to provide a diagnosis of the state of democracies around the world – also says that totalitarian regimes, of which the Chinese, are becoming progressively more repressive.
“Authoritarian regimes are increasingly repressive. They are burying their claws in an increasingly aggressive and deeper way,” IDEA Secretary General Kevin Casas-Zamora explained to Lusa.
China is a good example of this tendency of authoritarian regimes to consolidate and deepen totalitarian and dictatorial values, revealing a total lack of representation of their Government or citizen participation in political decisions.
In China, the 11 parameters related to government representativeness, civic participation, or executive scrutiny show negative values, well below levels even for other totalitarian regimes.
With intermediate values, parameters such as access to justice or social rights and equality appear, as well as gender equality or the absence of corruption, but even so at levels below the recommended global averages.
The only measure on which China compares favorably with the other 173 countries is its social security system, where it performs above the world average.
Freedom of expression -which is now being put to the test with the demonstrations against the Beijing regime’s strategy to deal with the covid-19 pandemic- appears at levels very close to zero, as do freedom of worship or freedom of expression. of movement, in a country that has intensified its policies of control over its citizens.
“We are going to see a lot of political instability. There are going to be many social movements reacting to social discontent and this could provoke a more severe political reaction from authoritarian regimes”, warned Casas-Zamora, in statements to Lusa. even before the protests and the repressive response from the Beijing regime, which are now being seen in China.
Source: TSF
