Handily???? Ummm ... you have an exceptionally rosy view of the latter half of the XX Century. You might also want to refresh you memory regarding the government of the Peoples' Republic of China.
They never were very democratic there, and historically they had no large mercantile class anyway.
If anything, China has adopted far more of the Western democratic model than anyone could have ever really have anticipated.
Hey, regarding "rosey views", anyone who thinks life would have been better with the Nazis in charge of Russia is definitely sucking on some strange stuff!