this is a gross oversimplification. 'institutions' is an interesting word. what's an institution? anything from taxes to academia to industrial policy to existing GDP per capita to religion can be called an institution. it's utterly meaningless and free from any predictive value.
China has 3 things going for it: 1. proven amazing social cohesion 2. proven ability to manage emergencies, 3. proven policy flexibility.
Meanwhile some other country: 1. proven poor social cohesion, 2. proven poor ability to manage emergencies, 3. proven policy inflexibility.
If an inflexible and fragile country is doing well, it might keep doing well. But every stumble is not self correcting, it is self amplifying. See how exceptionalist propaganda resulted in failure to manage initial outbreak of COVID, which resulted in poor financial decision to print $3T USD, almost none of which went to the consumer economy and instead went to prop up zombie companies/real estate/stock, which results in housing prices skyrocketing while the bottom falls out of the consumer economy resulting in people being late on rent and mortgage in danger of eviction, which then forces an eviction moratorium, which then results in landlords and banks becoming more dependent on the government for relief rather than their investments... We still haven't seen the end result of COVID yet, pandemic isn't over.
