No one argues the potential. But an inept regime is very capable of wasting a country's potential for decades. An economy controlled by a political party and where all decisions are made based on corruption or political connections is going to make bad business decisions.

It doesn't matter how good is Xi at running an economy, no one can, not even McKinsey. What makes capitalism successful is millions of initiatives, most of which random, which are tested against the market, the good ideas succeed and take over the bad ones, and in the long run you get extraordinary results. Centralisation always loses.

> Xi at running an economy, no one can

Good thing he doesn't micromanage the economy then. PRC private sector responsible for 60% of gdp, 70% of innovation, 80% of urban employment and 90% of new jobs. CCP+SEOs does some direction, but most of PRC run on market forces, while (IMO) top down / centralized priorities are more competently directed than inept, seeing as PRC is rapidly closing gap in myriad of industries, so much so that others are centralizing and restarting industrial policies in response to PRC moving up value chain. At least US sees enough PRC potential to rationalize massive unilateral tech sanctions because centralization was winning. See similar response when US had to slap JP semi when their centralized approach worked too well. Reality is, for strategic sectors with high moats, centralization always wins because you can't rely on private sector and capitalism to maintain market lead when the board would rather do stock buy backs. And sometimes centralization requires solid dose of corruption and political connection to align resources with strategic goals that private sector is not capable of tackling.

How does corruption and political connection align resources with strategic goals? My first thought was that it would make alignment worse since each agent is optimising for person gain, not for national gain.

See Yuen Yuen Ang's model that unbundle corruption, TLDR is PRC bureaucrats are mostly involved in "access money", i.e. elite "exchanges" to get things done (basically lobbying in the west). When aligned with CCP bureaucrats incentivized to hit performance KPIs according to development goals, whereby getting shit done increase access to to greater tiers of corruption / personal gain, it forms a system where corruption is aligned with competency and state interests. CCP officials have to be very good at getting shit done to get promoted to get access to the big graft bux. They want to do well in their tier3 city postings where they can graft thousands and be promoted to tier1 city where they can graft millions. That frequently involves patronage networks with other competent performers.

Years ago this was also noted by Yukon Huang, former World Bank director for China, Russia, and Former Soviet Union Republics, where he observed that PRC is the only country where increased corruption is correlated to increased growth - a paradox according to classical development theories. Essentially everywhere else corruption leads to inefficient allocation because corruption always almost not aligned with state interest. There elite are more just strait up involved in "grand" theft because the system is not aligned to make corruption contingent on realizing state goals. Of course at some point the corruption becomes so much that it affects social fabric, hence Xi's anti corruption drive that some think may have gone over board with respect to development because wheels stopped being greased due to fear/paralysis, no one want to do anythign for little reward or worse.

As a part of the diaspora, I agree with nitin-pai. Xi has all but destroyed China’s rise by killing Deng’s vision for China.

Besides, if you believe so much in the mainland and CCP, why did you leave?

In my opinion, if the mainland was a democracy, it would have probably overtaken the US by now in almost metric other than the military. Shenzhen would have also left Silicon Valley in the dust a long time ago. It’s too bad.

> I’m often wondering how one can do that, besides showcasing the freedom of expression that people can have in the west.

That only works for people who give a damn about freedom of expression. Can you imagine what it'd be like if almost every conversation you had were linked to money somehow?