AHC >70% of the worlds population lives under a full democracy.

Back to the OP, it could probably be done with a friendlier Soviet Union and a China that doesn't go communist and follows along at India's rate of development, which would have them both quite close if not "full" democracies. To be honest, I don't know enough about China to know how likely a scenario that is, though I get the impression Taiwan is a fairly decent democracy today, implying that the nationalists had it in them to get there.

A nicer, people's USSR, especially if it doesn't look super scary to the West, will indirectly help too, as the U.S. will have less (though probably still some) interest in propping up dictators in the name of freedom.

Heck, while I'm at it, if there is less Cold War... decolonization just might go smoother and Africa might benefit considerably... or decolonization doesn't happen and that puts France, Great Britain, etc on this TL's list of evil oppressors:eek:
 
Back to the OP, it could probably be done with a friendlier Soviet Union and a China that doesn't go communist

the ideology 'Communism' have absulutely bumpkins to do with if its a democracy or not, in fact, in its true form its much closer to being an absolute democracy (with whatever good and ill that brings) than Capitalism is. The issue is that the 'Communism' tag is very much abused and misused, and both the Maoistic China and the Leninistic Russia was only communist by name, and hardly anywhere close in act (communism aren't inheritly anti-intellectual, but buth Mao, Lenin and Stalin hated intellectuals that didn't march in lockstep with them, and knew that those were a protential nucleus that a revolution could be built around)
 
I suspect this just won't be possible with colonisation, which is ultimately linked to Europe's supreme power over the rest of the world, slicing up even China. A PoD might have to be a thousand years or more back in time - certainly way before 1453, at any rate.
 
Back to the OP, it could probably be done with a friendlier Soviet Union and a China that doesn't go communist and follows along at India's rate of development, which would have them both quite close if not "full" democracies. To be honest, I don't know enough about China to know how likely a scenario that is, though I get the impression Taiwan is a fairly decent democracy today, implying that the nationalists had it in them to get there.

A nicer, people's USSR, especially if it doesn't look super scary to the West, will indirectly help too, as the U.S. will have less (though probably still some) interest in propping up dictators in the name of freedom.

Heck, while I'm at it, if there is less Cold War... decolonization just might go smoother and Africa might benefit considerably... or decolonization doesn't happen and that puts France, Great Britain, etc on this TL's list of evil oppressors:eek:
I think any nuclear armed large country with a capitol in Moscow will look super scary to the UK and the USA, no matter how "nice" they are.
That said, I agree the easier way to reach this "71%" by making China democratic.
 
When I say "nice communism" I mean a non-Stalinist/Maoist sort, I think the big problem with both China and the Soviets was that both "communists" fought hugely destructive and messy civil wars to get there. Hard to emerge from that as some sort of functioning democracy. I figure China would have to have the Nationalists win early and completely (they came close, before the Japanese got involved) to have a reasonable shot at "full" democracy today. I have trouble seeing a communist/Maoist victory in China happening without the long, brutal civil war. If you can get them in power quickly and comparatively orderly, then I don't see why Chinese communism must go down the path of totalitarianism (which it did do, but I will confess to being impressed with their progress so far toward something between totalitarian and democratic).
 
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