I agree with you that top down structures can engage in rapid industrial transformations and have done in the past, The Soviet Union in the 1930's is another the example that comes to mind, I also agree with you that once these changes have occured the playing field changes.
The sorts of activities that China is having to undertake are the sorts of things that would be difficult in a more open society. The one child policy, transformation of vast tracts of agricultural land to industrial and building new new cities in the middle of nowhere for the mass migration going on from the country to the cities.
The inherent weakness in this system though is the paranoia about surface appearances. The state spends lots of its energies watching its own people, down the line that often translates to trying to work out who spoke out about the problem in the belief that if nobody talks about it the problem doesn't esxit, I think that this generally annoys people especially if the problem never gets resolved. I think this is often the source of the creative destruction that you talked about, people have ideas about how to resolve problems around them, these ideas are repressed by authorities who percieve these ideas to be a threat to their positions, most likely through some percieved or actual incompetence on their part. In this sense the institution could eventually become the problem that people start looking for a solution in the form of destruction.
In terms of how things will progress in the future, its difficult to say as we are starting to see the effects of the information revolution on autocratic state structures such as in the cases of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and possibly Syria. Other things like wikileaks releasing the diplomatic papers and the guantanimo files enables the people to hold government, individuals and interest groups responsible for actions carried out in their name. What the IT changes make possible are the opening up of institutions, successful future societies will most likely be the ones that recognise this and make more effective institutions with the new tools available. Like you say societies that are not able to achieve this will stagnate or wither and die.
We often speak as if the world is rushing toward some kind of common culture and perhaps it is in a way. But the effects of culture and the general ways people think do not make us all equal in all things. I am not talking about race or economic or political systems, I am talking about culture. The subtleties of the human mind as it creates an internal image of the world around it, which are of course, are always flawed and incomplete. Each type of image brings advantages and disadvantages to solving different kinds of problems, hence the much quoted advantage of respecting human diversity.
I remember not too many years ago when Japan was roaring great guns in its new wealth and in the pride of advancements it had achieved in so many different areas of human activity. However what is was in fact doing, was completing its final stage of advancement into full modernity and joining the first rank of modern nations. It was the first nonwestern nation to do so but it will not be the last. And I remember how this accomplishment was attributed to Japan’s unique culture, their sense of unity as a people, their business practices, and its invocations, which were going to let it surpass everybody else. But after reaching this stage of development they began to faultier.
Now I am the first to admit that the Japanese are a remarkable people and they do some things better than anyone else. The most obvious one is their ability to take someone’s else idea and continue to refining it to heights that were never dreamed of by the idea’s own creator and their quality control is second to none but after the know paths to additional advancement has been exhausted they didn’t know where then to go or what to do and then began drifting.
They saw this happening for themselves and knew they had a problem so they started several national campaigns to pursue goals to gain additional advancement (they were typical top down approaches as we would expect from a Confucian society) to create additional value within their society and thus become pioneers themselves in their own right but none of these projects ever fulfilled their hopes.
Through they are and will continue to be a great country and are a great people they are still drifting, are they not? I am sure they will not drift forever but for now they do not know what to do to overcome their current state of malaise that has lasted at least for a decade. They know that just doing more of what has worked for them in the past is not enough.
That will continue to be true until they make an adjustment in their culture or put it in better way, their way of thinking about the world they live in. That is what I mean when I say that when you travel from the known into the unknown in the search for progress, even if you have the smarts, the strength, the drive, and hope to go forward, the top down approach does not work very well.
The reason I think that my country is not going to just fade away like many assume it must and like many of the European countries seem to be doing, is because of its proven record of inventing and reinventing the future.
It has been doing this for a long time now. It dosn't do it alone I grant you but it is out in front. The future, the way all of us will live someday. What in the future will be considered to be modern, successful, desirable and even just normal? Is that wishful thinking on my part? Maybe, only time will tell.
