[gwern]

> 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?