Agreed. If we were to evaluate China objectively we would have to recognize its huge achievements. Living in China for much of the last 20 years and being able

Agreed. If we were to evaluate China objectively we would have to recognize its huge achievements. Living in China for much of the last 20 years and being able to witness the changes first hand, the subject often comes up in conversation both here and overseas. Without getting bogged down in tangential statistics, I generally point out that at the beginning of the 20th century, China was roughly parallel to India in many macro-economic metrics. Now look at the difference. It is a viable superpower, a space power, the world's renewable energy technology and perhaps also deployment leader (certainly e-vehicles), the world's reforestation leader, a far more educated (eg. popularly literate and numerate) and healthy (well fed) population, a population no longer dangerously expanding, corruption is under control, world leading mobile payments, world leading logistics, and it is at the center of the world's global supply chain (and consumption!) for almost every industry. That said, China has many problems (living here is earth-shatteringly frustrating a lot of the time), @alisonatwork's comment is on the mark, and the achievements of the 20th century do not by any means excuse the grave and terrible costs, but to suggest that its government is inept in a hand-wave is shatteringly naive.