[natecavanaugh]

My core belief has always been that as long as China has this culture of authoritarian and heavy handed internet control, it will always have a self-imposed limit on their ability to compete. I understand they have a deep rooted value of stability and that they believe they're keeping their society from running off the rails, but if they were to allow their citizens to contribute more to the direction of the government, then the end of the U.S. hegemony would not just be a possibility, but practically a foregone conclusion (some seem to think it already is inevitable, but it's been predicted for so long now, it's starting to feel like the forever predicted rise of Linux on the desktop).

However, I'd be curious to hear good reasons for China's economy to dominate the world stage even with this sort of thing constantly happening. I can kind of understand the brute-force approach of just pure production from a gigantic population, but India has a comparable population size, but not a comparable economy, so I tend to think that a large population doesn't guarantee a large economic output.

There is so much innovation I see happening in the tech of China, but their fear of their own citizenry and fear of transparency make me think they'll stay behind their potential.

This could all be my own Western bias for democracy, so I'd love to hear other thoughts on this.

[diego_moita]

I want to think like that but would like to understand the details before believing in it.

Recently, I read "China's Future" by David Shambaugh. He argues along the same lines as you. He claims that the development driven by exports and government investing is exhausted because of growing protectionism, competition from nearby countries and growing inefficiency on government companies.

Meanwhile the country still has a lot inequality to solve, between west and the east coast and rural and urban population. It is also getting old very fast and doesn't have a good welfare network.

Therefore, the only path ahead is development of internal market. He claims that for this the country needs transparency, the rule of law and diversity of ideas but I don't think he made it very clear to me, however. Truth is that autocratic countries (e.g: Russia, Turkey, Cuba, Belarus, etc) are very, very bad at creating diversified economies. Let's see if China finds a way to do it.

[germainelol]

Really agree on the inequality point, especially in the West around Xinjiang. Some of the stories my friends have told me about growing up there were ridiculous.

I think after you travel around China a bit, it's really difficult to see it as a first world country that's at the forefront of innovation.

You can go to a city like Shenzhen and see all these cool products being launched and huge skyscrapers, which is impressive given 30 years ago it was just a fishing village overshadowed by Hong Kong. But then you travel around and see that a lot of China consists of huge cities with shoddy living conditions and very limited opportunities.