You just look back at China's 5000 years Imperial history. It is no surprise of current development. Chinese history has never had Greek style democracy system.

You just look back at China's 5000 years Imperial history. It is no surprise of current development. Chinese history has never had Greek style democracy system. The closest in terms of political development will be Song dynasty which it has a chance to further survive, will likely turn into something like USA. Alas, ask any Chinese scholars, Song dynasty is considered the worst in China as it is "weak". Surprisingly, if you ask the same person, people living during Song dynasty were way better off than Tang or Han dynasty, both golden periods of China before Song. Even if you ask about science and literarure developments, it too was ahead of previous dynasty. Still, it is consider a failure when in terms of dynasty ranking. I know about Dr. Sun's republic, Taiwan and "voting politburo" . But these are considered modern development which hasn't really sunk into physche of Chinese race worldwide.