Economic boom and communist style governments don't last too long together as they are opposing forces.
I sort of agree. Yes, capitalistic pressures seem to be disrupting communism in China, but I would argue that China, like all "Communist" countries, is first and foremost a
Totalitarian state, and communism is an afterthought.
I've always laughed at how we misdiagnose all of these evil countries as "communist states." They are totalitarian states, police states, and/or dictatorships. The fact that they claim to espouse the lofty (if also misguided) ideals of communism is secondary. Think of the USSR, Cuba, N. Korea, Vietnam, and China. It isn't about economics, it is about government control.
The thing is that communism is s socioeconomic system, not a governing system. There is a distinct difference. China could move (and quite possibly is moving) toward capitalism, but retain a totalitarian regime. The two are not mutually exclusive! In fact neither are democracy (or, in our case, a democratically-elected constitutional republic [know the difference!]
) and communism.
You could easily have a democratic-style government that chooses to enact communist socioeconomic policies (see Europe as Exhibit A of how that might start).
And yet the media and our schools never seem to help us understand that these "red states" are not communist states, but rather totalitarian states that claim (and fail) to live up to true communism.
DISCLAIMER: I like capitalism, even our socialist-capitalism hybrid. It inspires innovation and rewards hard work. That said, I believe that communism
could produce good results
if it was practiced by non-greedy humans. (And these "communist" states have very greedy men at the top.)
I could go on and on (sorry that I have gone this far), but let me just say that a capitalist totalitarian China is developing. It is a strange marriage of systems because the people will lack some of the freedoms that also encourage innovation, but it will (and is) producing a strong and powerful state (economically speaking).
