The end of the end of history?

Capitalist liberal democracy's twentieth century victories against expansionist fascism and communism were hard-won and yet also unequivocal.

As Francis Fukuyama argued in 1989: The 'end of history' arrived in the wake of the 'unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism'; politically and economically, there was 'nothing else towards which we could expect to evolve.'

With the rise of shrewd forms of authoritarianism challenging the liberal mantra of open markets and societies, the presumptive end of history may prove short-lived.

Savvy authoritarian regimes around the world are carefully plotting paths to relative peace and prosperity while denying their citizens' democratic rights and freedoms: One-party state capitalism in China under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP); anti-democratic populism in Russia under the seemingly perpetual presidency of Vladimir Putin; and technocratic and monarchical Islamism in Qatar under the House of Thani.

With the CCP presiding over the most populous nation in history and the world's second largest economy, the evolution of communist party rule in China offers the most revealing and high-stakes test case for authoritarianism's global prospects.

China under the CCP is beset by severe institutional, environmental, political and social challenges: Endemic corruption, chronic air and water contamination, violent separatist movements and staggering inequalities.

Yet as my latest foreign policy report shows, these strains on the Chinese political system are unlikely to sweep the CCP from power.

With a strong track record of reform in the post-Mao era, the party has shown that it has the will and wherewithal to mitigate many of the sources of instability and popular discontent, and thereby secure its political survival.

Starting in the 1970s and 1980s, the CCP under Deng Xiaoping supercharged the economy with a measure of economic liberalisation. In the 1990s, the CCP broadened its constituency by encouraging businesspeople to join the party and decentralising elements of decision-making via the consolidation of village elections.

Under the Hu Jintao and now Xi Jinping administrations, the CCP has continued its pragmatic reformism with massive spending to curb China's atrocious pollution problems, revised legislation to better manage the expropriation of village farmland, and a concerted crackdown on graft and maladministration.

Capitalist liberal democracy is still what Fukuyama called 'the best possible solution to the human problem,' while the survival of the CCP's one-party state is far from a fait accompli.

Nevertheless, the success of the CCP's adaptive authoritarianism suggests history might have been rebooted.

Benjamin Herscovitch is a Beijing-based Policy Analyst at The Centre for Independent Studies and author of Accountable Authoritarianism: Why China's Democratic Deficit Will Last, released on 31 October 2013.