I think the main thing to focus on isn't that there's a direct correlation between economic growth and political liberalization, but rather a "genie out of the bottle" effect where societies will consistently mobilize to preserve their new standard of living, which props up and exaggerates political forces believed to provide that standard of living. Sometimes this leads to civil liberties, other times it leads towards nationalist or imperialist sentiment. But history shows that our tendency is to take on increased complexity as a way of getting something for everyone: regulated markets and civil liberties are both modes of complexification.

A lot of the big shifts happen during a crisis: Europe's social democracies, the liberalized markets of Japan and South Korea, the USA as superpower: all of those were forged from the global crisis conditions of World War II and have only gradually drifted off their various trajectories.

And, to the extent that the world has a crisis now(and we have a whole bunch of events conceivable as crisis scenarios), it isn't going to resemble the last one: the premises are different, and the means of resolution are likely to be different too.

That's a big "if". So far it seems like a unified China puts them at an economic advantage since they have the muscle to drive beneficial trade agreements through. So long as the ruling party keeps them all placated they'll have no reason to defect.

The response cycle for the Chinese government is vastly shorter than what King George's government was dealing with.