Democracy Index 2020 — Key Updates for East Asians

Democracy Index is published every year by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). All data and statistics stated below are retrieved from the report “Democracy Index 2020: In Sickness and In Health?”.

Key Updates:

1. 49.4% of the world’s population lives in a democracy, of which 8.4% in full democracy and 41.0% in flawed democracies.
2. The global democracy average score hit an all-time low since the first compilation in 2006.
3. Most countries experience a drop in Democracy Index mainly due to the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on Government responses and the restrictions the Governments posed.
4. Some impressive improvements are observed for Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, which could now be classified as “full democracies” (vs. “flawed democracy” last year).
5. As a result of increasing co-integration with Mainland China, Hong Kong is now placed as “hybrid regime” (vs.“flawed democracy” last year).

Key things relating to democracy scoring happening in Asia:

1. China, Singapore and South Korea took a much stringent approach in tracking and policing their citizens and locking them down in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
2. Some methods in tightening of controls over the media and civil liberties include greater online censorship, the expansion of population surveillance methods.
3. One of the biggest democracy downgrade within Asia, for Myanmar, is due to mass voter suppression in the country.
4. Another biggest democracy downgrade, for Hong Kong, follows after a serious crackdown by the authorities on dissent.
5. Hong Kong has seen to be no longer a “flawed democracy” mainly with the reasons of suppression on political reform debate and the top-down national security law imposed by the Central Government of China which could have undermined the judicial independence of Hong Kong.

Some trends of democracy over the past few years for The Four Asian Tigers

, and BRICS.