[vidarh]

If you look at GDP per capita growth be it China or other places, the striking thing is that stability seems to matter more than almost any level of policy differences.

E.g. you can see China's growth skyrocketing after the end of their semi-regular ideological purges, but Deng's large-scale reforms seems to not have affected the rate of growth much.

Presumably when a regime remains stable, people learn to work around even quite severe constraints given enough time.

That of course does not mean that reforms may not be helpful in making life better for people (or worse), but that they may mean less in terms of overall economic growth than avoiding rapid change.