China not becoming Democratic by 2000 would definitely change things. I wonder if they could keep up their planned policies to replace the soviet union as the cheif communist power or if they would just sorta fail after a few years from an internal democratic resistance. Especially with the Tienanmen Square massacre happening only a few years before
China is a large nation of many people and like many large nations, strong centralized leaders was what held the nation together. It's why the USSR and Communist China operated they way they did. Heck, the Premier of China has a nice boon of executive powers though the party system and what not does help manage that unlike over in the US. China for the most part has spent time fixing Korea and SEAsia while forging their own identity, downplaying "European culture" while the US and China continue their... complicated friendship (if US and USSR are opponents who respect the other and willing to work together, then US and China are vitrolic friends who act similarly for different reasons.)
Back to the USSR, they for the most part, did get better after demilitarizing, but they still have things like watching over content and so on, just... sneakier about it. Most of the shops are owned by the people who worked there and there's a weird mixture of what you could consider the lovechild of guilds and labor unions if raisded by bureaucrats. It's kinda nuts, but it works well. Additionally, the USSR's Miracle after reforming the economy and downsizing the military meant that alot of nations would get that idea.
Including the good ol US of A. Alot of the Neocons and Reaganites weren't happy about that, but oeople were sick of them after 16 years of Republican rule, especially during the recessions and economic turmoils under George HW Bush, though he got less of the blame once people credied Reagan for the bloated military in the hopes of defending them. Talk about backfire.
It's how we got President Paul Tsongas in 1996 and later 2000. He pretty much pushed social reforms in while cutting on the bloated military, especially with the audits. His fiscal conservatism was a pain since he could've done more, but at least he didn't try to do tax cuts. Hell, he actually undid Reagan's tax cuts on the rich and reformed the tax code so they wouldn't get away with it. He also ended the Drug War as another way of balancing the budget and decriminalized marijuana and other "natural" drugs like peyote and shrooms in his last months of office, citing Portugal's successful drug program.