A new article in East Asia Forum by Larry Diamond examines the hard time for democracy in Asia. According to the article:

Under the presidency of Donald Trump, concerns about democracy and human rights were demoted in US foreign policy. Trump’s administration deserves credit for reorienting American foreign policy to confront an increasingly authoritarian China. But while some US officials did what they could to advance human rights, Trump himself had a transactional, value-neutral approach to dealing with China. President Joe Biden will be different.

The Biden administration will prioritise the renewal of democracy at home and abroad. Yet the new administration faces formidable difficulties and contradictions in trying to counter authoritarianism and defend freedom in Asia. This is due both to an authoritarian China’s increasing power and the United States’ declining stature. The battle over China policy in the Biden administration will likely emerge from two competing views of what constitutes a ‘realistic’ stance towards China.

The ‘old realism’ emanating from former president Richard Nixon’s opening to China holds that drawing Beijing more deeply into the international system would make it a ‘responsible stakeholder’, facilitating its ‘peaceful rise’ and gradual modernisation into a more politically open — if not entirely democratic — system.

Here is a link to the full article.