From The Moscow Times:
China’s rapid economic development is the most amazing story of the past decade — just as the collapse of the Soviet Union and Russia’s slide into irrelevance was the main historical event of the previous 10 years.
Until the mid-1980s, Russia and China vied for the supremacy of their respective brands of communism. Then, in the early 1990s, the focus of the rivalry shifted to the best model for transition to the free market.
After the Russian default in 1998, it became accepted wisdom that the Soviet Union should have delayed democratization, reforming its economy along Chinese lines first. The rollback of democracy and reassertion of the role of the state under President Vladimir Putin can be seen in this light as a shift toward the Chinese model. [Full Text]
