Centralised planning will beat democratised decision making if they indeed manage to respond in time to a changing environment. The advancements in tech and communication allows you today to be more effective than ever. Think about global corporations with offices around the world. They are effectively operating under a centralised model and they do it very well.
What China learnt in the past 4 decades was how to manage the beast, not behead the messenger and have an effective planning anchored in true market signals.
Another point worth mentioning is that the Four Tigers are working with a planning and investment horizon of 30-50 years. Since they don't have to justify every four years about what they've been up to, they can be more effective in chasing bigger investments that have a longer-term ROI such as research, education, strategic industrial branches.
Now how do you compete with that?
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