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Comment by horseAMcharlie

Kotkin spoke to the Hoover Institute in Q1 this year about China and he had the insight that in any communist country you can't be half communist. It's a binary choice which means there's almost no opportunity for centrist constituencies to arise. The only constituencies are pro-central government, anti-central government and apathetic.

This makes government legitimacy the central political object that almost all political discourse revolves around, whether there happens to be a taboo in acknowledging it or not. Following this, policy mistakes become comparatively much harder to reverse in communist countries than in liberal/illiberal democracies, monarchies and pseudo-monarchies.

with Chinese characteristics.

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