Western democracies are "slow" because the low-hanging fruits of problems that can be solved fast has long been taken care of. What remains are never problems

Western democracies are "slow" because the low-hanging fruits of problems that can be solved fast has long been taken care of. What remains are never problems with an easy fix. Almost by definition, governments are fine-tuning a system that, by and large, is already the best the world has ever seen. Any change involves trade-offs that need to be taken into account. To use an analogy: after 20 epochs, you need to be using a drastically lower learning rate for your ML model than when you first started training, or it will fail to converge. Progress in China isn't so much the effect of autocratic structures, but of starting from a lower baseline. It's really easy to grow the economy when you're dropped into a scenario of almost medieval infrastructure, but a working administration and enough capital. First, you build a road. Then, a school... As the Chinese economy closes the gap to the west, it will start mirroring their problems more and more, as well.