There is no denying the fact that the ‘Rise of the Rest’ has been rocking the ideological boat of the Developed West with gleeful consistency for some years now.
The phrase ‘Rise of the Rest’ was coined by Newsweek’s brilliant Editor Fareed Zakarya, and it was designed to refer to those emerging economic powers of the world which were challenging the far superior might of America and its allies in the Democratic West.
The ‘Rest’ even in Fareed Zakarya’s mind was represented primarily by China, and the Asian Tigers. Brazil, and India too were in his mind.
Today however the ‘China Model’ is the talk of the world. It is being forcefully argued in increasingly more and more influential quarters that the much-maligned authoritarianism of China has, in strictly economic and ‘development’ terms delivered far more impressively than the so-called ‘human rights-based Democratic model of the Capitalism-dominated West.
A recent survey by the Pew Research Centre, an American polling organization has found that 50% of Americans today admire the China model (up from 39% in 2008) and 26% of Japanese are impressed by the Chinese system (up from 14%).
A study in this respect by an American Institute concludes that there has to be some inherent strength in the Chinese Model fathered by Deng Xiaoping to have succeeded in powering the phenomenal rise of China in the years after the democratic uprising was crushed in Tianamen Square in 1989.
Let it be remembered here that the Deng Xiaoping model of one-party political control + multi-dimensional economic pluralism was preceded by Singapore’s master builder and strategist Lee Kuan Yew’s dynamic and ‘centrally controlled’ development offensive.
Meaning thereby that democracy may well be a great cherished dream and goal, it can certainly not become a path to development growth and progress.
For the sake of taking Pakistan forward, let us learn more about Deng Xiaoping and Lee Kuan Yew……
The mark of a great leader is to take his society from where it is to where it has never been.
(This column was first published on 11 May 2010)
