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Democracy is personal to me. It is the reason why I’m an American not by choice, but by the efforts of my immigrant parents, who in the early 1980s in Hong Kong already anticipated the peril of the Chinese Communist Party, and made the difficult decision to leave. This was a decade when the world held great optimism about the direction Beijing seemed headed, when its authoritarianism appeared to ease.
But here we are.
Democracy has become a bit of a dirty word. Across some three dozen countries, a median 52 percent of citizens have lost faith in the system, according to Pew Research Center. In another study looking at established democracies, only one third of those born in the 1980s believe in democracy. Compare that to attitudes of those born in the 1930s, when for instance 72 percent of Americans held democracy essential. That’s a 40-percent drop. Political scientist Larry Diamond calls what we’re facing a “democratic recession.”