earthquake in Beijing might be enough to release the accumulated resentments of decades? Or will the party reform itself democratically, losing elections before they win them truly, as Taiwan's Kuomintang has done?

Only then would China outperform the United States, because a democratic, stable and innovative country with 1.3 billion inhabitants would exceed its smaller rival in every form of human achievement. By contrast, continued Communist rule would continue the errors inherent to dictatorship, starting with the massive waste of capital. In every province and part of China there are smaller versions of the megalomaniac projects pursued by central government: the Yangtze dam that they drowned substantial towns to build; the hugely expensive 1,142km high-altitude railway to Lhasa; the Beijing Olympics that forced thousands of factories to close or relocate in a futile attempt to control the capital's sickening air pollution; and the Yellow River schemes that have actually increased desertification.

Local follies start with lavish party

headquarters and extravagant leadership residences, where families often remain even after the leader dies. All this waste, combined with over-investment in the private sector, reduces the overall return on capital to very little – and eats into the real value of Chinese savings. This is one reason why China under Communism won't reach Korean levels of productivity, let alone compete with American innovation in the long term. This is a country which continues to depend on imported technology, designs, and structural models – even the major Olympic buildings were all designed by foreign architects. At present, China is still growing very fast as a low-cost producer, but only fools - and the writers of instant books - project its continuing fast growth in a future of rising costs.

'Parliamentary deputies sell their votes for hard cash'

India does not suffer from a democratic deficit but from the opposite: an increasingly corrupt populism which threatens its economic growth. The two largest parties, Congress and BJP, are still headed by respectable politicians, but they have been