Up until mid 2000's it seemed as though Russia was coming along.
Putin did a major pivot, or rather, 'major expansion of his authority' during the Obama years.
Future historians will maybe give us the answers ...
Everybody expected that economic growth = growth of democracy = growth of free speech.
If you look at the top 50 countries by GDP per capita, most of them still do have a relatively high degree of freedom (in speech, press, etc.) compared to the world average. (The exceptions tend to be authoritarian regimes with oil, but with "peak oil demand" being a possibility in the long term, the long term future of this position is uncertain, in my opinion).
Nothing has changed in this regard. China has risen far economically and is still rising today. But by the GDP per capita statistic they still rank roughly on par with the world average (in the 70s rank). Russia's probably the strongest authoritarian economy that is not hugely dependent on oil (although it's still a decent chunk of it), but as far as GDP per capita goes they've been treading water lately.
Correlation is not causation, of course, so it's hard to tell whether this is a feature or a coincidence. I suppose we'll find out in the near future. I think it's still an open question whether China's policies increasingly interfere with the increasingly important knowledge economy, and end up hindering their growth. (Based on how China tiptoes around censorship of tech areas like Github, I suspect they are well aware of this possibility.)
It's likely that China is not going high-income. It's obvious that India is not going high-income. It's apparent that Russia isn't going to be high-income either. Same for Iran, Indonesia, Philippines. So are we headed towards a planet which is mostly authoritarian, and in which most of GDP is produced in authoritarian countries?
Won't islands of democracy become fewer and further between? It seems that Democracy became much more expensive not unlike real estate and college are, and now a lot of communities can't afford it still.