i realize my comment is a little too extreme even for my own view. i criticize the West very strongly here, and while i don't walk back from any of it -- this comment doesn't express any of the deep love I have for the US.
anyway, this thread is not about me, so I won't bother spilling what the full spectrum of my views are. i'm fine to misrepresent myself to make an important point as I have done: there's so much anti-China propos that Westerners are blind to what they could learn, so a strong pro China stance is required to counter all the anti-China rubbish, also even those "pro China sinophiles" are often blind to the absolute illusory fantasy scale of Western liberal democracy, and so I wanted to combine those two things together in one mega punch hit. :p :) xx
As you point out, the Chinese are expert copiers. What i love about this is that it means they are open to taking the best parts of what's worked, and adapting it themselves. They're pragmatic, and flexible. I love that about them, because that adaptability and openness to achievements of others ( instead of insecurely insisting their existing way is superior ) means they are effective learners, and can effectively make the most of opportunities. So we can say they are simply doing this with policy, politics and governance, to create a new system.
Their risk taking attitude means they can run lots of experiments, different policies in different cities, and learn from the results. Remember tho, their scale didn't just happen. They built a country that big. Also, it's not just about having scale, it's about how skillful the choices you make with what you have, are. Russia and India also possesses scale of d different sorts, but they're not as successful to me as China.
yorwba and I believe different things about propaganda and harmony. I think the gap in beliefs is too much to cover here now. We agree that propos is an effective tool, but I believe it can be put to good and that's what the Chinese do. yorwba views propos cynically, and doesn't see it that way at all. Similarly, i think, differ our beliefs about harmony.
Finally i believe the option, the freedom, to make a bold move is a requirement, for taking care of your citizens well being. If your can't take risks because your political system disincentivizes you from doing so, then you're not not able to serve your citizens well being as much as you could. I don't know how you get around that weakness.
Occasionally, democracies elect a party that promises change and then actually delivers on it. That the status quo is mostly maintained has more to do with the fact that one high-stakes mistake can obliterate a party's reputation and completely ruin their chance at reelection, so representatives end up being more careful. It is essentially the "autocrat suppressing a revolution by populism" dynamic, except revolutions are regularly scheduled and less bloody.
> A technocratic-governed advanced society like China, can afford to make long term bets and bold moves for the good of its people, and thus in my view better deserves the mantle of caring for its citizens wellbeing.
I think caring for the wellbeing of citizens and making bold moves are mostly orthogonal, since you can make bold moves that completely ignore your citizens, but you can also care about them and not make a bold move when the risk isn't worth the benefit.
I do agree that that an autocracy can make longer-term plans and execute them more efficiently than a democracy, but if those plans turn out to be wrong, people tend to lose their lives. If you bet big, you lose big. China's 5 year plans may have lead to seventy years of economic growth, but occasionally there was widespread famine due to planning failure.
I very much doubt that China would be able to forge ahead at its current speed even after reaching a distribution of purchasing power similar to the West. Productivity gains only get you so far until there are diminishing returns. China's current growth mostly comes from taking established solutions and applying them at humongous scale. I'm not trying to imply that Chinese are only capable of copying, just that it's a hellishly effective method to further economic growth, and that growth will drop to Western levels as soon as all low-hanging fruit has been picked and copying doesn't cut it anymore.
I also don't think abusing "harmony" as an excuse to keep the population complacent is much of a Western thing. I have seen enough Chinese propaganda banners of a similar tone to believe that it is used pretty much universally to discourage dissenting opinions. You mention it yourself as a motivation for propaganda and mass deception, but phrase it as if it was a good thing.
I don't believe much of that propaganda actually ends up benefiting the people (although the daily reminder to brush your teeth might ;) ). I don't doubt that some of the people involved have good intentions, but the higher up in the party hierarchy you go, the more officials will care about securing their rank, and attempt to gain more influence. (This holds true of most social hierarchies.)
To summarize my point, I don't think China is as good as you claim it to be, nor is the West as bad, all the while not being as black-and-white as what you seem to be arguing against.