Not to glaze unelected uniparty governments, but this is what you can actually achieve if you don't have to focus on your new election the moment you enter office.
Also, China has always taken the long view, and has, historically, leveraged experience.
I’m no expert in their culture, and am rather worried about their influence, but I can’t but admire their incredible strategic vision.
Also, as a retiree, I’m rather saddened by some of the discussions, here.
(sometimes it materializes more directly, in things like NIMBY planning conflicts or homophobia)
Also, speaking only for myself, I live off of investments and savings, created from 40 years of living frugally and sensibly. Every few months, I have to chase off people that try to steal those savings. It’s not surprising, but is annoying. There’s a huge industry, based completely around stealing money from older folks (usually ones without the means to defend themselves).
Back when I was young, there was this rather silly movie, called Logan’s Run. Besides a brief flash of Jenny Agutter naked, it offered a vision of a culture that literally kills off anyone over 30. The interesting thing, was that the culture still had strategic vision, but that vision was supplied by a machine.
Not to mention self driving vehicles allowing for more independence in old age.
Sign me up.
Pensions are an insane ponzi scheme but I'm somewhat optimistic that dignified aged care is a problem that can be solved.
However there is no denying sacrifices will have to be made.
It is remarkable how well the tradeoff of "you don't need political freedom if the economic growth rate is high enough" works for China, and also previously Korea and Singapore. Even, to a certain extent, Japan - fairly high levels of political freedom, but somehow it's still a one-and-a-half-party state.
I really like a book by Foucault that discusses the origins of the modern state. He argued that the modern state could only originate in the West because only there did a balance of power among large states form, generating sufficient competition. In contrast, during China's Ming and Qing dynasties, it maintained an overwhelming advantage over its surroundings, thus lacking the impetus for reform. But now everything is different. The world is not a rational free-trade world. The EU has only two choices: either re-integrate into a unified empire, or disband and learn the survival strategies of smaller states—not taking sides and cooperating with both China and the US, or something like ASEAN. Its current loose alliance is the worst possible choice.
As for the AFD, it may simply be that we think the other parties are being ridiculous. The most important things for an industrial country—power and energy—are not being fixed, while liberals just talk empty talk about values. I recently read that quite a few sausage factories in Germany have already gone out of business, and some have been bought by Chinese companies (Wolf Essgenuss GmbH). If something like that happened in China, most Chinese people would probably feel that China should perish.