Trump, Xi and a dark year for democracy - Financial Times

28/12/2017

Trump, Xi and a dark year for democracy

The signals coming from the US and China generate disquiet for the global mood

GIDEON RACHMAN Add to myFT

Pro-democracy protesters march in Hong Kong as the region marks 20 years since its handover to Chinese rule from the British © AFP

Donald Trump remains a source of bafflement and confusion to the American establishment. But I felt I understood the US president better, after trips over the course of 2017 to South Africa, Turkey, Brazil and China — where politicians like Mr Trump are all too familiar. He is the loudmouth leader who is prepared to assault and undermine the institutions of his country — rather than accept checks on his power or challenges to his dignity. He is the demagogue, who is always prepared to appeal to the mob over the heads of the media. He is the swaggering president, who draws obsequious time-servers and venal chancers into his orbit. He is the man of power, all too willing to mingle his business and political interests.

The ascendance of Mr Trump — added to the growing power of China — has changed the political atmosphere around the world. There is such a thing as a global mood and the signals coming from Washington and Beijing are disquieting. The Trump administration is sending the message that the US is no longer interested in making the case for democracy and clean government. Meanwhile, Xi Jinping’s China is increasingly confident in arguing for an authoritarian model that tolerates capitalism — but crushes civil society.

The indirect effects of those signals have stoked a crisis of liberal values that is visible in places as different as South Africa, Turkey and Brazil. These three countries are significant mid-ranking powers and members of the G20 group of leading nations. Each of them, in the recent past, looked like places where liberal and democratic values were advancing steadily. Yet all of them are now struggling to maintain independent institutions that can fight corruption and check the power of political leaders. The roots of their separate crises are local and particular. But liberals in all three places feel that they are now swimming against the global tide.

The sense that hard-won freedoms are in danger was very palpable in South Africa in January — as the country waited to see who would succeed Jacob Zuma as its leader. A further decade of Zuma-style corruption could turn South Africa into a failed state. So it is a hopeful sign that the year ended with the election of the widely respected Cyril Ramaphosa as the new leader of the African National Congress.

For political liberals in China and elsewhere, it is disorientating to no longer be able to look to Washington for encouragement

The story of Turkey is far darker. Under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — a propagator of fake news and a personality cult — the country is slipping into despotism. Mr Erdogan has used the cover of a failed coup attempt in 2016 to stage an assault on the independence of the courts and the media. Talking to fellow journalists in Istanbul in May reminded me of how fortunate I am to work free from the threat of imprisonment or persecution.

In some ways, a visit to Brazil, a few months later, provided an inspiring counter-example. Courageous Brazilian prosecutors are rooting out corruption. One president, Dilma Rousseff, has been impeached and forced from office. The current and former presidents, Michel Temer and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, are also being pursued for corruption. Yet there is a price to be paid for all this housecleaning. Public confidence in the Brazilian political system has plummeted. And support for a far-right populist, Jair Bolsonaro, is rising — and will be tested in a presidential election in 2018.

Privately, Brazilian prosecutors are worried that old practices and habits will be hard to uproot completely. They have found relatively few examples of anti-corruption campaigns that have created lasting change. One of the few that the Brazilians cite is the experience of Hong Kong under the British.

But in Hong Kong itself, there are growing fears about the erosion of the “one country, two systems” approach that China has used to run the territory since the end of British rule in 1997. This year saw the imprisonment of Joshua Wong, Nathan Law and Alex Chow, three of the young leaders of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy “umbrella movement”.

The crackdown in Hong Kong reflects the increasing authoritarianism of the government of mainland China. The 19th Communist Party congress in October saw “Xi Jinping thought” incorporated into the official ideology of the party. In China that week, there was a stark contrast between the excitement of nationalists, who felt that their country was on the move; and the near despair of liberals who could see their dream of a transition to democracy drifting ever further away.

For political liberals in China and elsewhere, it is disorientating to no longer be able to look to Washington for encouragement. In the early months of the Trump administration, the Chinese government announced that it was granting several valuable trademarks to the Trump organisation. As one head-shaking Chinese academic put it to me: “It would appear that we have just bribed the American president.”

It was a small moment. But it seemed to capture something important and discouraging about 2017.