• Print
• E-Mail
• Feedback

12/28/2009

Although not everyone was equally enthusiastic about the biggest sports event of the decade, it was certainly a pleasant experience for the American swimmer Michael Phelps, who won eight gold medals at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. It was also a triumph for the 51 Chinese medal-winners, who put their country at the top of the medal count for the first time. In Beijing, China presented itself as a world power.

But the experience was far from pleasant for Teng Biao and Hu Jia. In September 2007, they published a letter calling on the international community to monitor the human rights situation in China in the run-up to the Olympics. Hu Jia was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison, and Teng Biao lost his license to practice law.

Teng Biao is now forced to realize that his case plays no role whatsoever in world politics, an experience he shares with oppressed Tibetans and Uighurs. Human rights activists protested against their treatment at the hands of the Chinese, as did a handful of politicians, but not emphatically enough. China is too big and too important to be the subject of harsh criticism.

Soviet dissidents were heroes to the West because they opposed a system that the West saw as its enemy. But Chinese dissidents are more inconvenient, because, although their suffering is perceived as a moral injustice in the West, any efforts to help them could adversely affect business. This dilemma is not new, but it has recently become more pointed. It also became an expression of the crisis of democracy. Over the last decade, the Western political system has lost its claim to global preeminence; it is no longer certain whether democracy will eventually prevail everywhere. In fact, it is not even certain that it will last forever in Western countries.

Nothing damaged the standing of democracy as severely as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. "The days of lecturing are over," Singapore intellectual Kishore Mahbubani said in a 2008 SPIEGEL interview. "I know many Chinese intellectuals who have often discussed human rights with the West. Everything is easier since Guantanamo, they say. They ask: 'Where is the difference? You mistreat people, we mistreat people. We are absolutely the same.'"

China Rising

While the West is contrite, a new self-confidence has developed in Asia. From 2000 to 2009, the Chinese economy has grown, year after year, at rates of 8.3 to 13 percent. It has overtaken Germany and one day it could overtake the United States, still the world's largest economy. This meteoric rise was possible without democracy. During the Cold War, the Europeans, Japanese and Americans believed that only democratic countries could guarantee prosperity to the masses.

Nowadays, affluent Chinese do not appear to be demanding a political say as vehemently as European citizens did in the 18th and 19th centuries. They are choosing instead to go their own way.

In addition, democracy in general isn't doing that well, and not just because of Guantanamo. In Germany, for example, ordinary people are increasingly disenchanted with democracy. The major parties are losing members and voter turnout is on the decline.

In the first decade of the 21st century, there was no political movement that could have generated any real enthusiasm, nothing that could have sparked passion. Only 47 percent of Germans in the former East Germany believe that democracy has generally been a positive development.

• Back
• 1
• | 2
• | 3
• | 4
• | 5
• | 6
• | 7
• Next

• Part 1: What the World Can Learn from 10 Years of Excesses
• Part 2: The 9/11 Crisis
• Part 3: The Financial Crisis
• Part 4: The Climate Crisis
• Part 5: The Democracy Crisis
• Part 6: Internet Euphoria
• Part 7: Return of History