Democracy has a wonderful history too. Ancient Rome, Germany before WWII, and the biggest sh!thohle a. k.a. India
China and Vietnam are not really communist now, but a mix of communism and state capitalism (using Western terms, perhaps there are other and better definitions).
The worst ever communist (or former communist) countries (you name it: North Korea, Laos, Cuba, Vietnam, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan) seems to be thousand times better than oldest Asian democracies, i.e. India and the Phillipines. Not to mention that these two were among richest and more advanced colonized countries at the time of independence and experienced no big wars or embargo.
And all LDC (least developed countries) are democracies, some more than 200 years old like Liberia or Haiti (Laos, Kyrgystan and Tajikistan may be listed based on GDP per capita, but they seems to be world apart (clean, orderly, civilized, educated, less religious radical, less ethnic conflict) compared to LDC democracies.