The global COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the rise — or resurrection — of authoritarian regimes across Asia, making the region a more dangerous and difficult place.
What makes the situation even more complex is working out where the actual power rests. Most authoritarian regimes have a figurehead leader, but often the distribution of authority within the ruling group — be it in a one-party state, military junta or dominant political party — can be hard to determine.
Even in functioning democracies, many leaders have embraced autocratic traits.
There are myriad markers for authoritarian regimes, including extra judicial killings and “disappearances”; torture in detention; a non-independent legal system; the lack, or weakness, of independent institutions and regulators; state-controlled media; evidence of familial and/or mafia-like kleptocracy.
All this curtails freedom — the right to assemble, form trade unions, criticise leadership, worship; freedom from ethnic persecution, and the simple ability of regular citizens to get an (affordable) passport and leave the country as they please.
Myanmar
At the start of 2021 the nascent struggling democratic experiment in one of the world’s most troubled nations was still alive — if on life support — following the landslide reelection of the Aung San Suu Kyi-led National League for Democracy.
But on February 1, 2021, the military, lead by General Min Aung Hlaing, executed a coup whose continuing aftermath is increasingly bloody as the multi-ethnic nation descends into civil war under its remorseless military junta. As Crikey reported yesterday, the rest of the world seems to have largely forgotten about the coup.
Authoritarian ranking: 10
North Korea
Nothing complimentary can be said about the multi-generational Kim regime that continues to threaten both its own citizens and its neighbours.
Authoritarian ranking: 10
The People’s Republic of China
There have been some ebbs and flows in the heights of authoritarianism by the Chinese Communist Party since it won the civil war in 1949.
Since his ascension to the top job in 2012, leader Xi Jinping — who holds all three of the country’s top posts as CCP secretary-general, president and chair of the Central Military Committee — spent a decade consolidating his power and ruthlessly weeding out internal party opposition. Dissent has been crushed, especially in legal and media circles, and even weak voices for reform have been silenced. Internal security, always foremost in the CCP agenda, has been ever tightened and a proto-cyber police state has emerged and is now replaying in Hong Kong.
Authoritarian ranking: 9
Brunei
Small, isolated and oil-rich Brunei is one of the few countries that follow strict Islamic sharia law, introduced in South-East Asia for the first time outside the Indonesian province of Aceh in 2019. Hassanal Bolkiah ibni Omar Ali Saifuddien III has been sultan of Brunei since 1967 and prime minister since independence from the UK in 1984, and is one of the few remaining absolute monarchs on earth.
Authoritarian ranking: 9
Pakistan
Long gone are any thoughts that international playboy and cricket star turned prime minister Imran Khan would be a moderating force on the military complex that has long controlled one of Asia’s three official nuclear powers. Instead he has cosied up to the nation’s theocrats — allowing religious persecution to ramp up — and drawn it ever closer to China, not a widely popular move. Still, widespread anti-government protests in 2021 would not be countenanced by regimes elsewhere.
Authoritarian ranking: 6
India
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has emerged as something of an unyielding demagogue, and his Hindu-centric Bharatiya Janata Party has taken the country down the path of theocracy, where anti-Muslim activities have been effectively encouraged. He has presided over a broad crackdown against lawyers, activists and dissent in general, along with a project to chip away at the nation’s independent legal system. Modi’s latest trick has been to try to suppress the voting pool with harsh citizenship laws.
Authoritarian ranking: 5
Sri Lanka
Since the 2019 election, the Rajapaska family has regained control of Sri Lanka with five members in senior government roles, including Gotabaya as president and his older brother and former president Mahinda as prime minister. This has seen the country slide into a full-blown kleptocracy, as well as an upswing of repression and sectarian troubles with the Tamil minority. China’s influence is again on the rise.
Authoritarian ranking: 7
Bangladesh
Since Pakistan split in half in 1971, Bangladesh has struggled to establish a functioning democracy. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s administration has locked up opponents amid claims of rigged elections and using the usual tactics to crush dissent.
Authoritarian ranking: 6
Thailand
Freedom has diminished and government repression has been on the increase since the 2014 military coup led by General Prayuth Chan-ocha, the self-appointed prime minister. Elections in 2019 were gerrymandered and the country’s Senate is now appointed. Along with increasing pressure on a once vibrant media and the region’s nastiest laws for criticising the monarchy (now led by a king who has seized back wealth and power) the Land of Smiles has been badly tarnished.
Authoritarian ranking: 7
Cambodia
Led by Prime Minister cum-dictator Hun Sen since 1986, Cambodia’s attempts to flirt with democracy have been unwound with monotonous regularity. In recent years media freedom has been further crushed and the regime’s tightening embrace with China has seen it move into the client state column.
Authoritarian ranking: 8
Laos
Landlocked and relatively underpopulated compared with its neighbours, the communist regimes in Vietnam and China have long competed for influence in a country with one of Asia’s more opaque regimes. The Laotian communists practice authoritarianism, state-sanctioned murder and religious persecution.
Authoritarian ranking: 8
Vietnam
The country’s ruling Communist Party has practised power-spreading better than China in the past decade and has opened up significantly, resulting in a booming economy. On paper a slightly kinder and gentler regime than its Leninist neighbours Laos and China, it seems to be heading where China was pre-Xi Jinping. Yet the ruling regime still cracks down harshly on any real or perceived dissent and freedom comes with the usual price of steering well clear of the government.
Authoritarian ranking: 7
Singapore
The modern Venice of Asia, for all its glitz, glamour and money Singapore remains a fiefdom of the Lee family and a gerrymandered one-party corporate-state. It’s often said that Chinese leadership has aspired to morph that nation into the Singapore model. It’s a country where wealthy locals have an imported underclass — much of which lives next door in Malaysia — to cook, clean, drive and build for them.
Authoritarian ranking: 4
Malaysia
Politics in Malaysia has always been exciting and the prime ministership has changed hands multiple times in the past five years. Its courts remain strong enough to lock up its thieving former leader Najib Razak after the region’s most stupendous financial scandal, the 1MDB affair. But it’s record is tarnished by its damaging effective economic apartheid in favour of native Malays.
Authoritarian ranking: 4
Indonesia
Democracy has rather surprisingly thrived well after the fall of the Suharto dictatorship in 1998, with multiple peaceful transitions of power, and it continues to push back admirably on China. Alliances in the major parties continue to shift and while the Islamists have largely been kept at bay, political leaders continue to flirt with them. The next presidential election will have its faire share of dynastic politicking.
Authoritarian ranking: 3
Philippines
The simple fact that former dictator Ferdinand Marcos’ son is in the mix for the next presidential election says all you need to know about the rollercoaster that is Filipino politics. The one-term only presidency has lurched between great leaders like Fidel Ramos and Benigno Aquino to kleptocrats like Gloria Arroyo. The Trumpian strongman Rodrigo Duterte — currently in the top job — has carried out a brutal campaign of state-actioned extrajudicial killings and media repression. But his time is up this year.
Authoritarian ranking: 4
East Timor
The region’s newest nation continues to have South-East Asia’s most thriving multi-party democracy, tarnished only by the embedded corruption of its senior leaders on all sides. Still there are plenty of lessons for larger and wealthier nations in the region in its determination not to slide down the authoritarian route. The main concern is the deterioration by its elders to hang on to power across the boards.
Authoritarian ranking: 3
The Republic of China (Taiwan)
The journey from Chiang Kai-shek’s fascist dictatorship to arguably Asia’s free-est country has been remarkable. Beijing of course loathes the living, breathing example of a mainstream Chinese society thriving with the yoke of authoritarianism removed; its first female President Tsai Ing-wen is proving a regional model for competent and calm leadership. Its political threats are singularly external in the shape of the mainland.
Authoritarian ranking: 1
Japan
The country than tried to take over Asia in World War II has working tirelessly to make up for its autocratic moment by maintaining an open and free society and changing leaders perhaps a bit too regularly. Japan has also actively worked to help its Asian neighbours with aid and economic assistance, and is an increasing counterweight to Chinese autocracy. But its long-term ruling parties are in some disarray and a certain stasis has gripped the nation for now.
Authoritarian ranking: 2
South Korea
Along with Indonesia and Taiwan, it is one of the region’s rare successful transitions from dictatorship to thriving democracy. The fact several of its former leaders have been prosecuted by courts is a strong indication of the separation of powers, and even its once untouchable mega-corporations, or “chaebols”, have been subject to justice. The competition is hot for its March 2022 elections.
Authoritarian ranking: 2
Mongolia
If any country understands the downside of authoritarianism it is landlocked Mongolia. And its capital, Ulaanbaatar, does a canny job of balancing its only two neighbours, China and Russia, using “third countries” — especially Japan and South Korea. Yet observers are concerned about the recent consolidation of power by Prime Minister Ukhnaagiin Khürelsükh’s Mongolian People’s Party after an unprecedented landslide victory last June.
Authoritarian ranking: 3
People locked up without trial – check
Whistleblowers jailed – check
Government policy for sale to the highest bidder – check
Vote buying – check
Makes illegal and aggressive wars costing millions of lives – check
Actively traffics in people for sweated labor – check
Appointments to publicly funded positions awarded on the basis of political loyalty – check
Actively protects climate destroyers – check
I could go on, but I am not sure there is an unbroken pane in my house of glass…
Brilliant ++++ ….
Australia seems to fit all the following categories in some form or other.
There are myriad markers for authoritarian regimes, including extra judicial killings and “disappearances”; torture in detention; a non-independent legal system; the lack, or weakness, of independent institutions and regulators; state-controlled media; evidence of familial and/or mafia-like kleptocracy.
T name some indicators:
Prevention/investigation of the extra judicial killings potentially of Julian Assange, and alleged Taliban combatants in Afghanistan.
Administrative Appeals Tribunal stacking – a non-independent quasi legal system.
No Federal ICAC.
Interference with so called independent institutions and regulators by Ministers – Murray – Darling.
State biased media – Murdocracy.
Secret Trials – Bernard Colaery et al.
Etc
We have it all but never received a mention.
Frankly, I’ve been thinking for a while that here in Australia (and it’s the same for the UK and USA) we just don’t have a “democracy” that’s fit for purpose. We’ve got something more like a “Murdocracy”.
As time changes and technology evolves more insidious techniques for group think and thought control, how do we manage the group think that is dictated to us by our Oligarchs and there little dung beetles (Liberals ?)?
I wish we could do something like get Academia to undertake an in-depth properly peer reviewed study into :
OK – yes – I know – no need to tell me. I’ll keep gazing as the sky looking for a flying pig.
When listed like that Michael . . . one can only fear our geography, lack of regional identity, current preference for two larger, ‘big brothers’ located on opposite sides of Globe and . . . greatest fear of all; a requirement to stand; Independent, self-sufficient and at peace with all close neighbours. What a future we’ve got?
Japan aside, we have never been militarily threatened by any country in Asia although the Federal Government has used both Indonesia previously and now China to stir up the usual “yellow peril” feelings amongst the populace. As Keating said, we need to seek security in Asia, not from Asia.
You know, I have sometimes wondered in an alternate history type of way, what things might have looked like if we had taken a different path in 1939. You know, if we had decided to be neutral like the Swedes. On what different tracks might our (alternate) history have led us?
I would suspect that we would have been far better off than we are at present and probably more like Singapore which does an amazing job of not being caught up in the various squabbles around the world.
What’s our ranking?
You could ask Dutton but he would think everything was normal.
And he wouldnt even know . . .