>China has proven that you can deliver both politically (they're clearly a significant global power) and economically What China proved that is that an authori

>China has proven that you can deliver both politically (they're clearly a significant global power) and economically What China proved that is that an authoritarian regime can smother economic progress for decades, and then can stop making those mistakes for a period. China's per-capita GDP is still only about 1/3 of Korea's and 1/4 of Japan's, and that difference is largely due to past failures by its governing elite. The question is whether China's system will be able to optimize for similar mistake-free periods in the future or if it will experience similar failure modes.