[steego]

China learned from Russia's experience and slowly loosened the reins on key industries before loosening the reins on other industries without completely relinquishing control.

The key problem with command and control economies in the 20th century was those economies were fundamentally limited by the command's ability to capture accurate market data, learn they key insights about that data and then execute smart decisions.

I'm not claiming China is capable of doing that today, but information technology has significantly improved the efficacy of the leadership's influence on economic activity. However, they were also wise enough to distribute the work of optimising markets by allowing business owners and capital investors to benefit from the efficiencies they introduce.

Simply put: The Communist Party of China has been using a very different playbook for the past 30 years and they've benefitted significantly and the effect of IT has had a profound impact on their efficacy.

[general_ai]

I think you're over complicating this a bit. Simply put, they first gave their people economic freedoms (and then not all at once) and then started loosening up in terms of political freedoms. If it takes them 50-100 years, so be it. That actually strikes me as a much more viable approach. You can't really give people freedom if they don't know what to do with it. Not without repercussions at least.