In response to the IIP eJournal Markets and Democracy, a reader self-identifed as “a Chinese citizen” submitted the following comment:

… What you termed as “marketization without democratization” is actually one phase in China’s democratization process, and it is a phenomenon of the process. The Chinese people have recognized that “marketization with democratization” is the hope for China and they will never allow “marketization without democratization” to persist for long. Social change takes time.

In order for China to realize “marketization with democratization” sooner, please do your best and in all possible ways to spread the idea of “marketization with democratization” and to help the Chinese people build a media where they can express their views. Meanwhile, please do not be deluded by the media of the power holders; because you are not living among the ordinary people at the grassroots level, and without understanding of the real situation, you are prone to being misled. (Telling lies is a common practice of the clique of the power holders in China). The key is, once becoming aware of the idea of “marketization with democratization,” the Chinese people will heroically fight for their own interests at any cost. Thousands of years of Chinese civilization attests to this.

The reader was responding to an observation by Kellee S. Tsai, professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, that China’s booming economy is bolstering its communist government. Tsai, citing ongoing censorship or repression of those who criticize the government, says that “the spread of market forces has bolstered authoritarian resilience and regime durability in China.”

Will China progress to “marketization with democratization” as our Chinese reader believes? Or will, as Professor Tsai says, China’s economic success prove “to be the party’s source of legitimacy rather than downfall?

A new article by Michael Mandelbaum, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, looks at the links between free markets and democracy. He says a free-market economy is not just an important component of democracy, but is an essential precursor to the rise of a democratic political system.

“The principal source of political democracy,” Mandelbaum says, “is a free-market economy. While there have been, and continue to be, countries that practice free-market economics but not democratic politics, no country in the 21st century that is a political democracy lacks a free-market economy.”

He makes what seems to be a good case that the tremendous expansion in the number of democratic countries during the 20th century is tied closely to the increased prosperity brought about by the spread of free markets.

But World on Fire, a 2003 book by law professor Amy Chua, raises some concerns about that happy confluence in a detailed examination of how the collision of free markets and universal suffrage in third-world countries can lead to serious problems, specifically an “ethnic backlash” when a newly empowered minority clashes with what she called a “market-dominant minority” in which most of the country’s free-market wealth is concentrated.

I’m wondering what this information means for the 21st century, specifically the 70 or so members of the United Nations that are not democracies, and who seem pretty entrenched in their non-democracy ways. Should groups (government and nongovernment) that are interested in promoting democracy focus more energy on economic reforms? And what about the risk of “ethnic backlash” that Chua raised? Can we find ways to keep the world from catching on fire?