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You have to give China's leaders their due (historical and present), because it seems to me that their permutation of Marxism, into mercantile Marxism, is what allowed their brand of Communism to economically flourish, while still retaining extremely muscular political control.

I don't think they ever bought into the stupidity of Marxist economics like the Russians did. The caliber of China's peasantry was much higher than that of Russia's, both in intellect and work ethic, and I think that is one of the reasons they've made large scale Communism (even their singular, and somewhat doctrine negating mercantile brand) work.

Tito's Yugoslavia was much the same. He basically told Stalin that if he wanted to be assured of Yugoslavia's "cooperation" in his hegemonic pursuits, he'd better mind his own economic affairs. And Stalin had no choice but to comply.

Authoritarian rule combined with capitalism is not something the Chinese invented. Authoritarianism combined with capitalism has a far longer history of working together than modern democracy combined with capitalism. Modern democracy is just a little over 200 years old. Most of human history has been a case of authoritarian rule combined with capitalism. Up until around 200 years ago, most European countries had this combination. It worked very well, especially during the "enlightened despot" era of the 1700's, when authoritarian rulers set the stage for modern democracy later by implementing rule of law, private property rights, and other universal, country-wide policies which helped develop majority middle-class populations which were the foundations for future European modern democracies. Similarly, E. Asian "tigers" over the past 50 years had authoritarian rulers who implemented capitalist policies which helped bring about majortiy middle-class populations which were the foundations of their future democracies. China is merely following this proven path today. Unfortunately, most of today's Third World democracies from Latin America to India are dysfunctional jokes which never had pro-capitalist authoritarian leaders who could first develop majority middle-class populations before adopting full-scale democracy. Premature adoption of democracy in Third World countries often leads to legislative gridlock which needlessly delays the capitalist reforms their peoples desperately need. On the other hand, authoritarian rulers can implement capitalist reforms without the needless delay of the democratic legislative process.

The reason today's Third World democracies are such failures is that they have majority-poor populations who inevitably elect socialistic politicians into office who, of course, oppose capitalist reforms. Combined with the inherent democratic legislative gridlock of Third World democracies, this is a formula for stagnation and the needless wallowing of generation after generation of people in poverty in these democratic countries (India, Indonesia, S. Africa, Latin America, etc).