China emerging from a very short industrial revolution analog
You could rephrase that as China rapidly refactoring the lion's share of global industrial production and doubling down the profits to realise the true potential of modern infrastructure with arguably greater accuracy and outlook. Arguably... but definitely there's some truth to it in areas such as energy sustainability.
That said, the economic challenges in China are real, but they do have the best possible toolset: centralized governance with a capable medium term planning capacity that is unencumbered by election terms, technical prowess, a population and capital base that make extremely large projects and investments feasible, and a population that has endured great hardship in living memory but emerged with concrete benefits such as mass literacy and for the most part improved material wealth. Those factors alone give them a tremendous degree of options.
I'm not an apologist: they certainly do put a foot wrong pretty often, and people do get sidelined and mistreated. Overall, however, the job they are doing is an extremely difficult one and the outcomes insanely impressive. It is a country that - at least to me - is in modern times one of the greatest wonders in human history.
> [...] and a population that has endured great hardship in living memory but emerged with concrete benefits such as mass literacy and for the most part improved material wealth.
Sort-of. The concrete benefits came when they stopped the greatest self-inflicted hardships.
Agreed, there was definitely a lot of needless suffering. Most places go through that at some point though... look at America's war against drugs, pharmaceutical industry out of control and gun laws for instance. Or the great depression. The communist period was China's way out of what had in some measurable senses degenerated in to a highly insular and corrupt feudal aristocracy punctuated by armed, roving wardlord bands and extreme religious groups declaring the nth coming of the lord... so you could look at it as an extended great depression for the average Joe, not really too far from more familiar experiences in America, without being too far off the mark. Much of China was something a lot more like poorer parts of like India a hundred years ago... people dying on the street.
>centralized governance with a capable medium term planning
Most people underestimate just how powerful a tool competent, forward-thinking government is, especially in the US, where it's thought government can do no right in many circles.
What China has accomplished in such a short period of time is truly amazing, I agree. And they aren't the only case: South Korea and Singapore are also good examples.
You could rephrase that as China rapidly refactoring the lion's share of global industrial production and doubling down the profits to realise the true potential of modern infrastructure with arguably greater accuracy and outlook. Arguably... but definitely there's some truth to it in areas such as energy sustainability.
That said, the economic challenges in China are real, but they do have the best possible toolset: centralized governance with a capable medium term planning capacity that is unencumbered by election terms, technical prowess, a population and capital base that make extremely large projects and investments feasible, and a population that has endured great hardship in living memory but emerged with concrete benefits such as mass literacy and for the most part improved material wealth. Those factors alone give them a tremendous degree of options.
I'm not an apologist: they certainly do put a foot wrong pretty often, and people do get sidelined and mistreated. Overall, however, the job they are doing is an extremely difficult one and the outcomes insanely impressive. It is a country that - at least to me - is in modern times one of the greatest wonders in human history.