Apropos of nothing, my morning coffee thought a few minutes ago was just how well the Chinese government has managed its country though a 20 year period of massive and ongoing GDP growth. Yes I know we’re not supposed to say nice things about China’s dictatorship/commie/corrupt/etc politburo out loud. Yes there are strange wrinkles and megarich living next to abject poverty. And the pollution sucks bigtime. And inflation bubbles up from time to time due to macro policy mistakes. And if you believe the average western soothsayer the nation’s banks are going to collapse any minute now. They’ve said it for the last 10 years so it must be true, right? And all those human rights abuses they do there which are awful. I mean, I’ve even heard they waterboard their enemies and then lie to their citizens saying they don’t do such a thing and even if they do it’s not torture. You’d never get something like that happening in…oh.
More seriously, controlling that sort of GDP growth over two decades and keeping the country relatively calm, orderly and all pulling in the same direction. Occurs to me that they’re running their corner a darned sight better than anything achieved by the people arrogant enough to think they’re living in the developed part of the world. Data from here.