[horseAMcharlie]

Kotkin spoke to the Hoover Institute in Q1 this year about China and he had the insight that in any communist country you can't be half communist. It's a binary choice which means there's almost no opportunity for centrist constituencies to arise. The only constituencies are pro-central government, anti-central government and apathetic.

This makes government legitimacy the central political object that almost all political discourse revolves around, whether there happens to be a taboo in acknowledging it or not. Following this, policy mistakes become comparatively much harder to reverse in communist countries than in liberal/illiberal democracies, monarchies and pseudo-monarchies.

with Chinese characteristics.