Comment by throwaway27448

I think you're right that politicians and the "deep state" (career bureaucrats) are easy to manipulate.

But there is an obvious explanation: short-term economic growth is a contradictory goal to building local industry. China has built their economy around scale and the rest of the world takes advantage of this. Scaling local industry will be expensive and require investment. Of course politicians are eager to provide both growth and the aesthetics of local industry while paying off their patrons.

This is unsustainable. At some point things will snap and people will swing wildly to the left or right.

Regardless of ideological or humanitarian concerns with China, they are clearly able to manage an economy with a longer term strategy than anyone else on earth, excepting maybe Cuba, North Korea, and Iran. Singapore and Rwanda also seem to be less affected by the malaise of short-term pleasuring of investors. Even norway with its sovereign wealth fund hasn't managed to diversify—or perhaps they simply don't have the labor or resources to do so.