That's where the big freakout is coming from.
The Chinese on the other hand imposed hard nosed industrial policies. Western economists have been saying that Chinese industrial/financial/developmental policy was going to result in collapse 'in five to ten years' for the last 30 years. And now it becoming obvious, it's not happening.
If china is lucky xi jinping, who is now president for life, will be a great ruler for his whole life. If china is typical, he will make some bad decisions and the system will collapse.
The PRC definitely has a lot more low-level corruption, but the US has enough high-level corruption to be concerning.
Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore were all authoritarian regimes before they became "freer." The sad reality is that the current environment effectively proves post-facto that China needed a strong hand to guide the country through these difficult head-winds. Would it have been better under Hillary though? That’s what’s troubling about US leadership in these times.
Chinese authoritarianism has relatively little effect on its economic output, it's not run like the Soviet union
China's military expenditures are small as a percentage of their economy. And unlike the US they have an functional industrial/labor policy apparatus. The US used to, but it was dismantled in the 1980's.
Capitalism absolutely fails when there's "too much" surplus.
Social focused alternatives also fail to survive in to human implementation because power corrupts and greed ruins everything.
We need some benevolent dictators to do slightly wrong things for the right reasons, and a lot of right things for the right reasons, to break our cultures out of the insanity that infects them.
Or maybe someone can come up with a greed proof form of governance and resource allocation that can tolerate the inherent failure modes associated with using humans as cogs in the system.
Europe in particular, isn't, for the most part a "Failure of capitalism" -- people are living well enough, much better than in China for instance.
The problem here is that even though by most humane standards the average european or american could be better off than the average chinese, perhaps exactly because of this China will achieve more competitively. Maybe optimum standards of living doesn't coincide with optimum productivity. What then?
That's a problem for the US in particular because its core justification, so to speak, [for the American social-political-economic system] was this entire premise: 'More productive, more competitive, means ultimately means better in every way'. 'The US was more productive than the USSR, therefore Socialism is bad'; 'We win in competition therefore we have the greater future'. But if China, as a an authoritarian surveillance state is more productive than the US, how to sustain this thesis?
And how to deal with China if they may be bound to outgrow their peers in the future? What if they start spreading this cultural modus operandi justified precisely by economic productivity?
For me the answer is obvious: this thesis must be abandoned. There are two ways to deal with an enemy that is willing to sacrifice humanity in the name of slightly better performance.
(1) Through international law: make agreements and regulations demanding standards of living, democratic minima, etc. that apply globally.
(2) Though conflict/direct competition. If an authoritarian hegemony is expanding and threatening our core values, and there is no other way to stop, then you should do the necessary to stop them, degrading temporarily the standards of living to outpace them and override their doctrine in the expectation to restore to a more humane program afterwards. I don't condone the practices of the USSR (it was a very authoritarian and problematic regime on its own), but this is mostly their rationale through the Cold War; this aspect of their ideal at least seems very reasonable to me.
Let's hope that either
(a) China's approach ultimately doesn't actually show to be as effective as it seems;
(b) They fail to expand their regime/doctrine and collapse from internal democratic pressure (unlikely as control/surveillance technology expands);
(c) International treaties control the situation and enforce better human rights
Before the West needs to enter a conflict.
Note how this goes against Nature: we'd be refusing to let the most 'fit' nation out-compete and dominate others through some global coordination, and try to enter a suboptimal (in the competitive sense) quasi-steady-state. It isn't clear we can achieve this, but this would a most beautiful achievement of humanity. Finally taking destiny into our own hands free from the current make of A Blind Watchmaker. Being blind, those Watchmaker very often fail to prevent disasters stemming from their work, another significant sign of its troubles: with our inability, but also necessity, to achieve global coordination in sacrificing maximum naive development speed (but helping humanity's environment in the long run).
Huge oil reserves with a country as small as Norway which has a tiny population.
And we can argue lots of these resources were acquired at the time when colonialism was a thing and rest all development is built upon surplus from that.
Maybe not all European countries were colonists but later they'll make a union and trade will be free in that union resulting in some countries losing their land and companies to foreign European countries (as happened in some East European countries)
So the union ensured that they'll be bailed out on the back of those powerful European countries.
Europe is a special case in a book with homogenous population, so religious or racial difference isn't resulting in serious disagreement and violence and this brings a lot of stability to it.
All I want to say is China does not have same advantages as European country so it might not work the way you imagine without Chinese Communist Party.
Even Ukrainians and Russians can find a way to create an ethnic identity strong enough that it's worth going to war with each other. Or Serbs and Croats.
Europe has been at war with itself for 1000s of years. It only stopped when the wars became so bloody that everybody agreed to not do it again.
I suggest you try read things more objectively. Filter out the unnecessary emotion from your interpretations.
This also aligns with a long term goal of taking over Taiwan.