Are Chinese leaders more focused or is an authoritarian regime better suited to rule a billion plus people?
Barnett: Authoritarian systems may be better suited to rule populations undergoing extensive economic growth (simply add more resources), but there is no evidence in history—along with loads of counter-evidence—to prove that authoritarian systems are better at managing intensive growth (involving more innovation and higher productivity). Indeed, the economic statistics here are very clear: when all things are equal, democracies routinely outperform authoritarian regimes. The “unequal” part here is the country’s place along the developmental scale. China’s rise is still—and for the foreseeable future—based overwhelmingly on extensive growth (trying to adequately employ/exploit that rural 700m, for example), but it desperately needs to trip over into unprecedented intensive growth to accommodate the society’s equally unprecedented demographic aging. In twenty years’ time, average workers will need to earn a lot more to be able to support those two parents and four grandparents—the so-cal
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