Why Nations Fail

partly because there was a lot of catching up to be done.
Growth under extractive institutions is easier when creative

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destruction is not a necessity. Chinese economic
institutions are certainly more inclusive than those in the
Soviet Union, but China’s political institutions are still
extractive. The Communist Party is all-powerful in China
and controls the entire state bureaucracy, the armed forces,
the media, and large parts of the economy. Chinese people
have few political freedoms and very little participation in
the political process.
Many have long believed that growth in China would
bring democracy and greater pluralism. There was a real
sense in 1989 that the Tiananmen Square demonstrations
would lead to greater opening and perhaps even the
collapse of the communist regime. But tanks were
unleashed on the demonstrators, and instead of a peaceful
revolution, history books now call it the Tiananmen Square
Massacre. In many ways, Chinese political institutions
became more extractive in the aftermath of Tiananmen;
reformers such as Zhao Ziyang, who as general secretary
of the Communist Party lent his support to the students in
Tiananmen Square, were purged, and the party clamped
down on civil liberties and press freedom with greater zeal.
Zhao Ziyang was put under house arrest for more than
fifteen years, and his public record was gradually erased,
so that he would not be even a symbol for those who
supported political change.
Today the party’s control over the media, including the
Internet, is unprecedented. Much of this is achieved through
self-censorship: media outlets know that they should not
mention Zhao Ziyang or Liu Xiaobo, the government critic
demanding greater democratization, who is still languishing
in prison even after he was awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize. Self-censorship is supported by an Orwellian
apparatus 
that 
can 
monitor 
conversations 
and
communications, close Web sites and newspapers, and
even selectively block access to individual news stories on
the Internet. All of this was on display when news about
corruption charges against the son of the general secretary
of the party since 2002, Hu Jintao, broke out in 2009. The