I don't disagree that China's got some serious issues - food security, skewed demographics, insane cost-of-living issues (that blow the USA's out of the water), a ticking time bomb of a real estate bubble, etc. I have studied this for a long time, and worked with Chinese nationals for several years.

However, their government has the absolute trust of the populace at large, and the one benefit of a dictatorship is that things get done in government, rather than endless partisan bickering where the only real beneficiary is the stock market which relies on government's inability to do anything besides say words.