Download “Iran’s Chinese Future“, a demographic comparison of two countries on similar political tracks, published by Foreign Policy in June 2009, following pro-democracy demonstrations in Iran’s cities.
The past few weeks’ images (June, 2009) of tens of thousands of brave, bold, and mostly youthful opposition supporters crowding Tehran’s boulevards have encouraged some onlookers to draw hopeful parallels to the protests that helped topple most of the authoritarian regimes in Eastern Europe, from the late 1980s onward. But, from a demographer’s standpoint, Iran’s youthful population age structure (in other words, its distribution of residents by age) suggests a different analogy. Depressingly enough for the democracy protesters in Iran and those who stand with them around the world, a closer comparison may be with China’s youth bulge experience 20 years ago, including the social fractures that pervaded that generation’s political culture and the ruthless and ongoing response by conservative elements of Chinese leadership.
Read more by downloading “Iran’s Chinese Future” here ….