Our role model: China?

Recently, on July 28, 2014, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán gave a speech in Tusnádfürdő entitled "The Era of the Work-Based Society is Coming."2 The speech caused quite a stir both in Hungary and abroad. I will focus on just a few sentences from his wide-ranging discussion. "...there is a race to find the form of community organization, the form of government that is best able to make a nation, a community, internationally competitive. This explains why... the hot topic in thinking today is understanding systems that are not Western, not liberal, not liberal democracies, perhaps not even democracies, and yet make nations successful. Today, the stars of international analysis are Singapore, China, India, Russia, and Turkey. It is a peculiar list. What are the characteristics that can be found in all of the countries mentioned, but not in other countries that cannot be considered stars? Let us look at Table 1. Four of the five countries had high GDP growth rates for a long time, even during and immediately after the crisis, much higher than in many "declining" Western countries and Hungary. In the eyes of many, this would justify the "star" rating. However, Russia stands out from the crowd, where the average GDP growth rate in the period 2009-2013 was no higher than that of the United States. As for the other characteristic mentioned in the speech, India is considered an odd one out.