[dkimball]

China's extraordinary growth is because it's in the process of industrialization -- which, by definition, only happens once for a given country, and in which ideology does not have a very significant influence. Examples of industrializations of this sort include the Gilded Age in the US and the 1920s and 1930s in the USSR; contrary to what Chang expects, they don't go away once they're completed (but, since governments do not create them, they aren't endorsements for the government which conducts that industrialization; cf. Fernand Braudel's _A History of Civilizations_. For an extrapolation of the same character, but not in the context of economics and thus easier to recognize, see http://xkcd.com/605/).

Is China under its current regime stable over the long term? I don't think so. If the very guards in the prisons have no belief that the state will endure through their lifetimes, and their junior officers think nothing of complaining to foreigners about the incompetence of the civilian leadership, the state will probably not weather a strong internal challenge.

Do I think this challenge will come from a democratic opposition? Of course not. China is seeing a large amount of enthusiasm for the country and little enthusiasm for its government; in this circumstance, the most likely result is the overthrow of the Communist government in favor of a nationalist government of some sort (which will probably be enough of a headache for the rest of the world that we'll long for the good old days of the export-minded Communists). Expect a replay of the 1911 Revolution and the overthrow of the Qing; I wouldn't even rule out an era of "postmodern warlordism" in the interstitial period before the next government solidifies its power. It sounds silly, but China is a very large place, and asserting one's authority over the whole country -- especially after the collapse of a dysfunctional bureaucracy and/or a civil war -- is a non-trivial exercise.

I don't think the timeframe for this is particularly long, either, except by the standard of CEOs. I think most of HN's readers will see a breakup and new regime in China within their lifetimes; if I had to place a bet, I'd expect it to occur 40 years from now, give or take ten years -- that is, once the generation currently in their 20s and 30s ages into political power.