[yosito]

> The Chinese model seems to be 'we will ensure you have access to food and water and energy and in exchange your total loyalty to the state is required'

Judging based on the most recent incidence of mass starvation, which model do you think worked better? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine

[photochemsyn]

I'm not sure if that is relevant to this particular issue, but the history is fascinating. Not everyone gets excited about fertilizer chemistry but when Nixon went to China and opened up trade, the very first major industrial projects were the construction of massive ammonia fertilizer plants across China, built with American technology (*well German technology from the 1900's more accurately, just updated). This ended the famine cycle in China [1]:

> The removal of the limits to agricultural growth and China’s industrialization came in the immediate aftermath of US President Nixon’s historic 1972 visit to China. The first commercial deal signed immediately after the visit was China’s order for thirteen of the world’s largest synthetic ammonia complexes for producing nitrogen-based chemical fertilizer. China purchased additional plants in the 1970s, developed its own capacity to build chemical fertilizer plants in the 1980s, became more or less self-sufficient in the 1990s, and began exporting chemical fertilizer by the turn of the new millennium.

[1] https://chinadialogue.net/en/food/9279-modern-china-s-agricu...

Now is a rigidly authoritarian state necessary for this kind of technological development? Err... no.