Comment by sgt101

I think a big problem is that economics - as defined by culture from the enlightenment to about 1980, with markets created by locally rational transactions - isn't as important as the culture that defined it made it to be. For example, the market and the function of the market was seen as an absolute / starting point for an economy. In China it was not possible to simply establish a market, but instead what has happened is that the state created pseudo private enterprises outside of a market system / in the absence of a market system which then underpinned further economic activity. The market of ideas - which is the construction that we put on democracy has been further challenged. The Chinese government employs more than 50m people, and this wide participation in a structured and hierarchical mechanistic system provides another way of managing and legitimising capital allocation.