I don't know if it's fair to say that the CCP should be characterized as a weak government, as opposed to the government that pulled off a miracle in modernizin

I don't know if it's fair to say that the CCP should be characterized as a weak government, as opposed to the government that pulled off a miracle in modernizing China and competing on the world stage. A lot of people criticize the state of Chinese academics as uncreative and fraudulent, and their industries as copycats, but there might cross a tipping point where China is clearly more innovative than the EU, even as the EU leads the world in democratically-minded regulations and civic rights. There are many world democracies and autocracies. We absolutely should never expect that merely following some first principles of free markets and democracies should determine why some nations rank atop the world.