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by TazeTSchnitzel 4129 days ago
The USSR wasn't really capitalist.

Also, you don't need to meet Western development to be a success. China has incredibly high growth rates and Deng Xiaoping's "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" (i.e. the mixed economy) basically saved China.
2 comments
gwern 4129 days ago
> The USSR wasn't really capitalist.

The PRC isn't really capitalist either, consider how much of the economy is still state-owned enterprises. In any case, the reference class here is more 'fast-growing industrializing economies starting on a primitive agricultural basis', where regularly you see impressed people (and flacks) declaring that This Time Is Different and perhaps Western-liberal-democracy-plus-capitalism has been rendered obsolete. USSR, Japan - China?

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mcguire 4129 days ago
No, but during the middle of the twentieth century, the USSR grew from a mostly rural, agrarian country to one of the major world powers. (Modulo, of course, Russia, which was effectively European, in much the same way that the early colonies in the US were European and how parts of modern China are "advanced" and others are not.)

If we take these things to have a certain lifespan, I'd expect China to have a significant restructuring around 2030.

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