Yeah, like in case of SK, before 90s(when it was mostly under dictatorships) it recorded double digit GDP growth in about half of the years. In contrast from 90s onwards they recorded > 10% GDP growth rate just in 2 years out of the 30. Though in fairness, they had less of a ceiling to grow in.

Yup, and social liberalization has followed economic success for SK and Taiwan. A lot of people thought it would happen to China as well but it's been resistant.

I find OP's assertion a bit comical because trying to tie governance model to economic success in Asia would mean that you should definitely pick military dictatorship over democracy if you want economic success. (and if you do pick democracy, pick an authoritarian flavor with state involvement like Singapore or Japan)

I don’t know where this “China did not change” narrative comes from. 40 years ago, Chinese people could not choose where to work, what to wear, where to live, what to study, where to travel. During the Cultural Revolution, neighbors could rat you out for “colluding with the enemy”, whatever that means. All of that has changed. Hundreds of millions of Chinese travel abroad every year, and nearly everybody returns willingly. What part of this great change looks like “China did not become more free”? It isn’t even some footnote fact, it’s a huge boulder staring in people’s face, and people can’t see it.

The mainstream view in America has been that political liberalization necessarily means "one person one vote democracy". Most can see China's economic progress, but early on there was hope that economic progress would lead to social reforms too.

Speaking of people not being able to see it...

Lee Kwan Yew gave a pretty fantastic speech to journalists where he basically covered, from first principles, why his country had different laws around freedom of press and how other channels of accountability exist in Singapore to compensate. Then the journalists proceed to ask pretty dumb questions framed as "singapore is a dictatorship because it has no free press".

https://www.c-span.org/video/?2217-1/world-perspective-press