Martin Kettle, in passing, makes a useful point about some unexpected consequences of the 1989 revolutions:
It was not…just [in] eastern Europe [that Communism collapsed] but across the world, above all in Russia and China. Once these countries, with their billions of skilled but largely impoverished inhabitants, began to become market economies, the writing was on the wall for high-cost welfare settlements in the developed world.
Source: Kettle: Germany and France are struggling with a new world, The Guardian, May 24th, 2005