Dambisa Moyo: Is China the new idol for emerging economies?

"Give me liberty or give me death."

When Patrick Henry, the governor of Virginia,

said these words in 1775,

he could never have imagined

just how much they would come to resonate

with American generations to come.

At the time, these words were earmarked

and targeted against the British,

but over the last 200 years, they've come to embody

what many Westerners believe,

that freedom is the most cherished value,

and that the best systems of politics and economics

have freedom embedded in them.

Who could blame them?

Over the past hundred years, the combination

of liberal democracy and private capitalism

has helped to catapult the United States

and Western countries

to new levels of economic development.

In the United States over the past hundred years,

incomes have increased 30 times,

and hundreds of thousands of people

have been moved out of poverty.

Meanwhile, American ingenuity and innovation

has helped to spur industrialization

and also helped in the creation and the building

of things like household appliances

such as refrigerators and televisions,

motor vehicles and even the mobile phones in your pockets.

It's no surprise, then, that even at the depths

of the private capitalism crisis,

President Obama said,

"The question before us is not whether the market

is a force for good or ill.

Its power to generate wealth and to expand freedom

is unmatched."

Thus, there's understandably

a deep-seated presumption among Westerners

that the whole world will decide to adopt

private capitalism as the model of economic growth,

liberal democracy, and will continue

to prioritize political rights over economic rights.

However, to many who live in the emerging markets,

this is an illusion, and even though

the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,

which was signed in 1948,

was unanimously adopted,

what it did was to mask a schism

that has emerged between developed and developing countries,

and the ideological beliefs

between political and economic rights.

This schism has only grown wider.

Today, many people who live in the emerging markets,

where 90 percent of the world's population lives,

believe that the Western obsession

with political rights is beside the point,

and what is actually important

is delivering on food, shelter,

education and healthcare.

"Give me liberty or give me death"

is all well and good if you can afford it,

but if you're living on less than one dollar a day,

you're far too busy trying to survive

and to provide for your family

than to spend your time going around

trying to proclaim and defend democracy.

Now, I know many people in this room

and around the world will think,

"Well actually, this is hard to grasp,"

because private capitalism and liberal democracy

are held sacrosanct.

But I ask you today, what would you do

if you had to choose?

What if you had to choose

between a roof over your head

and the right to vote?

Over the last 10 years,

I've had the privilege to travel to over 60 countries,

many of them in the emerging markets,

in Latin America, Asia,

and my own continent of Africa.

I've met with presidents, dissidents,

policymakers, lawyers, teachers,

doctors and the man on the street,

and through these conversations,

it's become clear to me

that many people in the emerging markets

believe that there's actually a split occurring

between what people believe ideologically

in terms of politics and economics in the West

and that which people believe in the rest of the world.

Now, don't get me wrong.

I'm not saying people in the emerging markets

don't understand democracy,

nor am I saying that they wouldn't ideally

like to pick their presidents or their leaders.

Of course they would.

However, I am saying that on balance,

they worry more about

where their living standard improvements are going to come from,

and how it is their governments can deliver for them,

than whether or not the government

was elected by democracy.

The fact of the matter

is that this has become a very poignant question

because there is for the first time in a long time

a real challenge to the Western ideological systems

of politics and economics,

and this is a system that is embodied by China.

And rather than have private capitalism, they have state capitalism.

Instead of liberal democracy, they have de-prioritized the democratic system.

And they have also decided to prioritize

economic rights over political rights.

I put it to you today that it is this system

that is embodied by China

that is gathering momentum amongst people

in the emerging markets as the system to follow,

because they believe increasingly

that it is the system

that will promise the best and fastest improvements

in living standards in the shortest period of time.

If you will indulge me, I will spend a few moments

explaining to you first

why economically they've come to this belief.

First of all, it's China's economic performance

over the past 30 years.

She's been able to produce record economic growth

and meaningfully move many people out of poverty,

specifically putting a meaningful dent in poverty

by moving over 300 million people

out of indigence.

It's not just in economics,

but it's also in terms of living standards.

We see that in China, 28 percent of people

had secondary school access.

Today, it's closer to 82 percent.

So in its totality, economic improvement

has been quite significant.

Second, China has been able

to meaningfully improve its income inequality

without changing the political construct.

Today, the United States and China

are the two leading economies in the world.

They have vastly different political systems

and different economic systems,

one with private capitalism,

another one broadly with state capitalism.

However, these two countries

have the identical GINI Coefficient,

which is a measure of income equality.

Perhaps what is more disturbing

is that China's income equality

has been improving in recent times,

whereas that of the United States

has been declining.

Thirdly, people in the emerging markets

look at China's amazing and legendary

infrastructure rollout.

This is not just about China

building roads and ports and railways

in her own country --

she's been able to build 85,000 kilometers

of road network in China

and surpass that of the United States --

but even if you look to places like Africa,

China has been able to help tar the distance

of Cape Town to Cairo,

which is 9,000 miles,

or three times the distance of New York to California.

Now this is something that people can see and point to.

Perhaps it's no surprise

that in a 2007 Pew survey, when surveyed,

Africans in 10 countries said

they thought that the Chinese were doing

amazing things to improve their livelihoods

by wide margins, by as much as 98 percent.

Finally, China is also providing innovative solutions

to age-old social problems that the world faces.

If you travel to Mogadishu, Mexico City or Mumbai,

you find that dilapidated infrastructure and logistics

continue to be a stumbling block

to the delivery of medicine and healthcare

in the rural areas.

However, through a network of state-owned enterprises,

the Chinese have been able to go into these rural areas,

using their companies

to help deliver on these healthcare solutions.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's no surprise

that around the world, people are pointing at what China is doing and saying,

"I like that. I want that.

I want to be able to do what China's doing.

That is the system that seems to work."

I'm here to also tell you

that there are lots of shifts occurring

around what China is doing

in the democratic stance.

In particular, there is growing doubt

among people in the emerging markets,

when people now believe that democracy

is no longer to be viewed

as a prerequisite for economic growth.

In fact, countries like Taiwan, Singapore, Chile,

not just China, have shown that actually,

it's economic growth that is a prerequisite

for democracy.

In a recent study, the evidence has shown

that income is the greatest determinant

of how long a democracy can last.

The study found that if your per capita income

is about 1,000 dollars a year,

your democracy will last about eight and a half years.

If your per capita income is between

2,000 and 4,000 dollars per year,

then you're likely to only get 33 years of democracy.

And only if your per capita income

is above 6,000 dollars a year

will you have democracy come hell or high water.

What this is telling us

is that we need to first establish a middle class

that is able to hold the government accountable.

But perhaps it's also telling us

that we should be worried about going

around the world and shoehorning democracy,

because ultimately we run the risk

of ending up with illiberal democracies,

democracies that in some sense

could be worse than the authoritarian governments

that they seek to replace.

The evidence around illiberal democracies

is quite depressing.

Freedom House finds that although 50 percent

of the world's countries today are democratic,

70 percent of those countries are illiberal

in the sense that people don't have free speech

or freedom of movement.

But also, we're finding from Freedom House

in a study that they published last year

that freedom has been on the decline

every year for the past seven years.

What this says

is that for people like me

who care about liberal democracy,

is we've got to find a more sustainable way

of ensuring that we have a sustainable form

of democracy in a liberal way,

and that has its roots in economics.

But it also says that as China moves

toward being the largest economy in the world,

something that is expected to happen

by experts in 2016,

that this schism between the political

and economic ideologies of the West and the rest

is likely to widen.

What might that world look like?

Well, the world could look like

more state involvement and state capitalism;

greater protectionisms of nation-states;

but also, as I just pointed out a moment ago,

ever-declining political rights

and individual rights.

The question that is left for us in general

is, what then should the West be doing?

And I suggest that they have two options.

The West can either compete or cooperate.

If the West chooses to compete with the Chinese model,

and in effect go around the world

and continue to try and push an agenda

of private capitalism and liberal democracy,

this is basically going against headwinds,

but it also would be a natural stance

for the West to take

because in many ways it is the antithesis

of the Chinese model

of de-prioritizing democracy, and state capitalism.

Now the fact of the matter is,

if the West decides to compete,

it will create a wider schism.

The other option is for the West to cooperate,

and by cooperating I mean

giving the emerging market countries the flexibility

to figure out in an organic way

what political and economic system

works best for them.

Now I'm sure some of you in the room

will be thinking, well, this is like ceding to China,

and this is a way, in other words,

for the West to take a back seat.

But I put it to you

that if the United States and European countries

want to remain globally influential,

they may have to consider cooperating

in the short term in order to compete,

and by that, they might have to focus

more aggressively on economic outcomes

to help create the middle class

and therefore be able to hold government accountable

and create the democracies that we really want.

The fact of the matter is that

instead of going around the world

and haranguing countries for engaging with China,

the West should be encouraging its own businesses

to trade and invest in these regions.

Instead of criticizing China for bad behavior,

the West should be showing how it is

that their own system of politics and economics

is the superior one.

And instead of shoehorning democracy

around the world,

perhaps the West should take a leaf

out of its own history book

and remember that it takes a lot of patience

in order to develop the models

and the systems that you have today.

Indeed, the Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer

reminds us that it took the United States

nearly 170 years

from the time that the Constitution was written

for there to be equal rights in the United States.

Some people would argue that today

there is still no equal rights.

In fact, there are groups who would argue

that they still do not have equal rights under the law.

At its very best,

the Western model speaks for itself.

It's the model that put food on the table.

It's the refrigerators.

It put a man on the moon.

But the fact of the matter is,

although people back in the day

used to point at the Western countries and say,

"I want that, I like that,"

there's now a new person in town

in the form of a country, China.

Today, generations are looking at China

and saying, "China can produce infrastructure,

China can produce economic growth,

and we like that."

Because ultimately, the question before us,

and the question before

seven billion people on the planet

is, how can we create prosperity?

People who care and will pivot towards the model

of politics and economics

in a very rational way,

to those models that will ensure

that they can have better living standards

in the shortest period of time.

As you leave here today,

I would like to leave you

with a very personal message,

which is what it is that I believe

we should be doing as individuals,

and this is really about being open-minded,

open-minded to the fact that our hopes and dreams

of creating prosperity for people around the world,

creating and meaningfully putting a dent in poverty

for hundreds of millions of people,

has to be based in being open-minded,

because these systems have good things

and they have bad things.

Just to illustrate,

I went into my annals of myself.

That's a picture of me.

Awww. (Laughter)

I was born and raised in Zambia in 1969.

At the time of my birth,

blacks were not issued birth certificates,

and that law only changed in 1973.

This is an affidavit from the Zambian government.

I bring this to you to tell you that in 40 years,

I've gone from not being recognized as a human being

to standing in front of the illustrious TED crowd today

to talk to you about my views.

In this vein, we can increase economic growth.

We can meaningfully put a dent in poverty.

But also, it's going to require

that we look at our assumptions,

assumptions and strictures that we've grown up with

around democracy, around private capitalism,

around what creates economic growth

and reduces poverty and creates freedoms.

We might have to tear those books up

and start to look at other options

and be open-minded to seek the truth.

Ultimately, it's about transforming the world

and making it a better place.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)