A professor of history at Princeton at a fellow at the Hoover Institution here at Stanford,

Stephen Kotkin is one of the nation's most

compelling observers of global affairs past and present. Dr. Kotkin is now

working on the third and final volume of his definitive biography of Joseph Stalin.

Stephen, thanks for making the time to join us.

Welcome to this special work from home edition of Uncommon Knowledge. Great to be back.

We'll come to the coronavirus in a moment.

First, China and what's gone wrong?

Here's a quotation. The late Hoover fellow Harry Rowan writing in 1996.

When will China become a democracy? The answer is around the year 2015.

This prediction is based on China's impressive economic growth,

which in turn fits the way freedom has grown elsewhere in Asia.

China was supposed to follow the pattern of South Korea and Taiwan.

You start with economic freedoms, you achieve economic growth, the population begins to demand political freedoms, and you end up with democracy.

That has not happened. How come?

First of all, God bless Henry Rowan and unfortunately he did not predict the future properly.

Would have been better had Henry been right.

I'll give you two quick answers to your opening question,. First an important point is that it's

nonsense that authoritarian regimes have some type of unwritten social contract with their population so that the

population agrees to give up their freedom and the regime promises to raise standards of living. The reason that's nonsense

is because if the regime fails to uphold its side of the bargain, for example if it

fails to continue to generate economic growth, the

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