"It's awfully bold to claim that the US is obsessed with making rules, and China isn't."

Of course China is obsessed with rules just like many countries are, and it's pretty clear it firmly polices its laws.

The difference is that after the death of Mao in 1976 Deng Xiaoping consciously and openly embarked on a task to pull China into the modern technological era, and to do that he deliberately set out to populate China's Politburo with highly educated engineers and like. (I gave references to this in a HN post a short while ago.)

Thus, for nearly 50 years China has been run by the best brains available rather than those who've the gift of the gab and promise the electorate whatever it takes to get them elected.

Sure that's not democracy and many of us in the West find it irksome. However, like it or not, over the last 50 years China's rulers have run a command economy and worked an economic miracle.

Deng Xiaoping's insight of getting the best and brightest to run the country was brilliant, unlike most dictators he chose a course of action that actually benefited China. There's no question about that, the evidence is there for all the world to see.

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kelseyfrog a day ago | parent | next [-]

Which poses an interesting consequence.

It's not exactly controversial to generalize HN's sentiment that the US would be better off with more engineers and experts in elected office, which all other things being equal, implies that the US should be more like China.

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insane_dreamer a day ago | parent | prev [-]

The problem is that it’s more of a dictatorship now with Xi than it was after Deng. It’s not longer the best and brightest but those loyal to Xi. That’s how you got highly capable people like Li Keqiang sidelined and many others purged altogether on “corruption “ charges. A benevolent dictator can be beneficial for a country in crisis (the original Roman idea of a dictator which was a temporary position), like you could argue Deng was, but it’s not a good model for long-term governance.

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hilbert42 20 hours ago | parent | next [-]

"The problem is that it’s more of a dictatorship now with Xi than it was after Deng."

Despite what I said that's very true. Throughout history we've seen many dictators who've had both some degree of benevolence and the best interests of their states at heart only to be followed by tyrants or idiots (right, Rome's one example).

As you say, it’s not a good model for long-term governance. Unfortunately, benevolent dictators are a rare breed.

With China, the key question for the world is whether the country will become increasingly authoritarian and all that's likely to entail, or over time settle down and become more benign without major disruption, revolution and or war. The fact that authoritarianism seems to be on the rise generally doesn't bode well, methinks.

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ronsor a day ago | parent | prev [-]

This is the key. The problem with a dictatorship has never been that they are inherently bad, but because they are extremely unreliable long term. Even a "good" dictator that does almost everything perfectly will only be around for so long, and a bad dictator is very likely around the corner.

	▲	insane_dreamer 21 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The other problem is that at some point the primary goal of the dictator is to remain in power and then their decisions are based on the best options to ensure they stay in power (i.e., suppression of anything that could threaten that), and these decisions are often orthogonal or even opposite to the best options for the country and/or its citizens.