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China has mastered the hybrid communist state. The people are still not free and essentially slaves to a regime without any input. But you have semi free markets and they allow for foreign investments, technology, business practices and management techniques to come in. Trade and the forces of a free market shape these new economies but the old power brokers simply put themselves on top as CEO of some major state run energy conglomerate such as the Russian Gazprom. The real power brokers remain the same old people as before, they simply become the Kingpins in these new pseudo free economies which you also have in Vietnam, Russia etc. These economies are largely doing fine because unlike the past where they were isolated, ignored supply and demand curves, were to slow to react because everything was planned centralized... they today are often MORE capitalist that the US / Germany or other mixed economies of the West when it comes to dealing with dead firms that aren’t making money, or changes in technology or demand based on consumer taste etc. I would bet money that I could take an idea and go to production in China with this idea in less time, with less costs, with less restrictions than in the US.
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Do you realize a thing you described has nothing in common with communism?
It is called Fascism and Nazy Germany&Imperial Japan are historical examples of this system.
Because the means of production are still in the hands of a few. They (the power brokers) just today pimp their people out as in China. You still have a small group and essentially a single party. You have no free men, no rights, no ownership of what really matters. Books have been written on this and I talked about this in 1997 already and wrote about it here in 2003 (if you care go back): There really is no difference between communism and fascism except in a self described academic way that ignores the means and the end and rather focuses on the colors of flags or titles. Both arrive at the same point but declare themselves to be the antithesis of the other. They fight each other to the death because they are competing for power, but both do the same things once in power. Stalin or Hitler, no difference. Mao or Stalin, no difference. Except academically where with semantics and rhetoric one tries to carve some difference out.
These regimes simply incorporate a hybrid approach where they let the reigns a bit loose but still hold them in their hands. They allow trade and limited communications, they want that technology, the business practices and management techniques as well as the direct investments in capital machinery etc. They want their select students to study abroad and learn key things... But at the end of the day the people in that nation are still slaves under a regime that has no semblance of real rule of law, democratic principals, or rights for citizens etc. All the means of production are still held by the same old people that 30 years ago sat in the Polit Bureau. Instead of wearing a green uniform with a giant bus driver hat and huge medals or a blue uniform as in China, they today put on a suit and give themselves titles like CEO. If you get in their way, you end up dead or like him: http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2005/10/23/billionaire_sent_to_siberian_prison/
The difference between today and 30 years ago is a perception of freedom and the fact that we get slave labor from there (China) or resources (Russia).