id880181984
Link to originalIn the English-speaking press, there has been a lot of ink spilled over Chinese economic “authoritarianism” and the plight of the poor abused billionaires. There has also been a lot of ink spilled over China’s seemingly never-ending stream of technological marvels: the giant solar farm shaped like a panda, the world’s fastest bullet train, the magnetic rail gun, the helicopter-like “flying taxi” prototypes, and so on. But for ideological reasons, few commentators make a connection between the two: that China is capable of these technological feats, at least in part, because it is economically “authoritarian” and keeps its billionaires on a short leash.