> There's no reason to believe that Xi Jinping thought can produce an economy that in any way is competitive with liberal capitalist democracy.
Isn't it already? Speaking broadly of economic trends for the past 30 years, China has dominated manufacturing, at levels of increasing sophistication. To the extent it's running into issues, it's been a victim of its own success: laborers in China are increasingly too expensive for China to be a cost effective exporter at the low end. And in exchange it's developed Shenzhen, which has pretty much no competition in its niche. And as far as tech goes, on the whole China is still behind the USA, but at the same time solidly ahead of every other country. The entirety of the EU area doesn't have a Baidu or Bytedance, let alone a Tencent or Alibaba.
Isn't it already? Speaking broadly of economic trends for the past 30 years, China has dominated manufacturing, at levels of increasing sophistication. To the extent it's running into issues, it's been a victim of its own success: laborers in China are increasingly too expensive for China to be a cost effective exporter at the low end. And in exchange it's developed Shenzhen, which has pretty much no competition in its niche. And as far as tech goes, on the whole China is still behind the USA, but at the same time solidly ahead of every other country. The entirety of the EU area doesn't have a Baidu or Bytedance, let alone a Tencent or Alibaba.