India will eventually show them eventually up as having an inferior political model but on balance I can see how an evidence-based person would conclude that China's government is working well, on the basis that it presided over the fastest leap forward in living standards in human history. I'd still rather live in Europe, India or America though.

I doubt it. If anything India's system is less effective, equally or more corrupt, and downright barbarous in some social aspects (e.g. castes). Plus the rampant inequality which is much worse than China.

So, on the long term, I am optimistic that India will catch up. Especially now that the USA is moving away from China as "work bench".

I hope we here in Europe will follow that policy, too. It just makes much more sense to support an emerging democracy than to support a facist regime.

Singapore disagrees.

They simply bankrupt the opposition through lawsuits and void their candidacy. That is not a functioning democracy.

Though, I mean, part of that difference is that the rest of the world feels uncomfortable with sudden shifts like India's, and so usually gets together to trade-sanction the problem away so that things will go back to the way they were (which might cause the country to lash out, at which point it becomes a World War); while, on the other hand, the international community is so used to "the way things are" with countries like China, that they don't do anything.

See, I have the better argument!

Indeed, in the 50’s and 60’s it seemed plausible that the economies of North Korea, Cuba, Russia, the DDR were all going to surpass their Western counterparts before long. The wheels started to come off in the 70’s and by the 90’s it was all over for them.

Do you not realise just how large the Communist world was back then? The USSR alone was vast. Now China and North Korea are all that’s left.