ABSTRACT
Asia, to spokespeople for Asian Authoritarianism, stands for the geographical region of East and Southeast Asia in a positive way, a world of humane values and world-renowned economic success. In contrast, in Europe, Asia is regularly perceived as incompatible with civilized progress or as the enemy of humanity.1 The conventional wisdom from Russia west is that Communist Party dictatorships were a continuation of Asian despotisms, the impositions of Mongols or Ottomans, imagined as heirs of the ancient Persians who had threatened freedom in Greece in the classical age. When Communist tyrannies crumbled in Eastern Europe, people understood democratization as leaving the despotism of the East for the freedom of the West.2
