The simple minded are always impressed by authoritarian regimes. They confuse a large group of people, all performing the same or similar tasks as “efficiency”. However, the truth of the matter is that such regimes are the furthest thing from efficient, and what efficiency there is, is likely either a holdover from a previous regime, or outside of governmental control to some extent.
If you objectively look at China, you get a very different picture. Expressions like “penny wise-pound foolish” and “mortgaging their future” come to mind. Their illusion of central control is betrayed by the reality of a confederacy of provinces, each who ignore the regime with relative impunity.
Perhaps the greatest irony is how much the typical Chinese *wants* the central government to succeed, and even more, to enforce its dictates over the provinces. The vast majority of the tens of thousands of protests that happen every year are in hopes that their national government will enforce its laws against the illegal activities of provincial and local governments.
Yet these protests are bizarrely seen as “anti-state”, and the central government brutally suppresses its most ardent supporters, while allowing provincial and local governments to run amok.
So what is going to happen? The Chinese economy is unsustainable, and most likely will have a major collapse in the near future. What happens from that point is critical. An efficient government would have a massive restructuring, but this will most likely not happen. What will happen is bizarre.
Throughout Chinese history, a reoccurring theme is the cyclic nature of China. Emperors were seen like the seasons of the year, and were trained from birth to carry out whatever their seasonal assignment was to be. The first of the four cycles was the “builder” emperor, who would recreate China from scratch. All new buildings, lots of new and untested ideas.
His successor was the “maintenance” emperor, who would get everything newly built running smoothly as a system. China would be harmonious. He was followed by the “degenerate” emperor, who would pull his government back to Beijing, and let the country fall apart, everything decaying and in disrepair.
Finally, the fourth emperor, the “water” emperor, would destroy everything and probably slaughter millions of people, using chaos to cleanse the country and eliminate the detritus. Then the cycle would begin anew with a “builder” emperor.
Everyone in China followed this system, and would carry out whatever would forward the current emperor. But they would ignore orders contrary to the purpose of the emperor. So there really was no choice in the matter.
Ironically enough, Mao Tse Tung, had he been emperor, would have been a “water”, destroying emperor. And he behaved like one, because even though he was a communist and supposedly above all that, everyone expected it of him.
Well, right now, China is moving from a “maintenance” cycle into a “decadence” cycle, or is possibly further along and nearing a “water” cycle. But that is not a good place for China to be, if their economy is about to collapse.
It will either mean that China will have either an extended depression, the country in chaos and collapse, or they are going to have an incredibly bloody civil war, destroying most of the country. Or another tyrant like Mao who will slaughter people like there is no tomorrow.
In any event, it doesn’t look good.
An excellent key point. They are much like individual kingdoms or mafia families and so far the central government has not pushed the control issue.
I think as long as the central government gets it's slice of the action they are happy to just let things slide for now.
We will see in the future how far they let any “family” get powerful. The problem with mafia families is that the individual greed always creates tensions.
These tensions that create weak points for the family to fracture on. Either another family then takes over the “action” in that region or a powerful government can more easily break up the families business.
It creates a dangerous cycle that eventually ruins the “action” for all the families and sooner or later marginalizing the power of the whole of the organization to effect control over the society they are a sub-part of.
Then either the “civilian” society they operate in gets tired of the problems and forces an end to the corruption... then there is a either collapse of mafia, or the mafia and the society they are part of both collapse together.
Leaving both too weak to be a power to influence beyond their original territory. Then both have to drop back and start over.