The problem is that it’s more of a dictatorship now with Xi than it was after Deng. It’s not longer the best and brightest but those loyal to Xi. That’s how you got highly capable people like Li Keqiang sidelined and many others purged altogether on “corruption “ charges. A benevolent dictator can be beneficial for a country in crisis (the original Roman idea of a dictator which was a temporary position), like you could argue Deng was, but it’s not a good model for long-term governance.
"The problem is that it’s more of a dictatorship now with Xi than it was after Deng."
Despite what I said that's very true. Throughout history we've seen many dictators who've had both some degree of benevolence and the best interests of their states at heart only to be followed by tyrants or idiots (right, Rome's one example).
As you say, it’s not a good model for long-term governance. Unfortunately, benevolent dictators are a rare breed.
With China, the key question for the world is whether the country will become increasingly authoritarian and all that's likely to entail, or over time settle down and become more benign without major disruption, revolution and or war. The fact that authoritarianism seems to be on the rise generally doesn't bode well, methinks.
But we had heard of a few unfortunates who suffered hay fever in spring and some who had asthma but no one that I knew had these complaints. (Also, we had heard of people who'd gotten ill after being stung by bees.)
Let me illustrate how times have changed. At school, we'd swap peanut butter sandwiches without so much as a thought, teachers never mentioned allergies let alone warn about the dangers of swapping sandwiches.
One of the pleasures of going to Saturday arvo movie matinées was to share peanuts and peanut brittle which where I grew up was almost as popular as popcorn. Again, we'd never heard of anyone becoming ill from eating peanuts.
I have no knowledge of being allergic to any food, if I am then my response is so mild I'm unaware of it.
Similarly, these days I'm rather bemused when asked to wait 15 minutes after getting a flu or COVID shot in case I suffer an allergic reaction. I recall the mass school vaccinations against polio. We had 1000+ kids vaccinated between morning tea break and lunchtime—and there was no mention of allergic reactions and no one got sick (except of course for the small cadre of boys who suggested they miss the next class because their arms were sore—and no, they weren't excused).
Same with the army, you'd get multiple shots one after the other and there was no mucking about afterwards.
When someone of my vintage hears of all these allergies and the large numbers suffering from them one's first reaction is to think these poor delicate petals must be grossly exaggerating but clearly they're not.
It's clear that over the last 40—50 years something has changed dramatically. We've gone from something that was essentially unknown in the public consciousness to a well-known serious health issue that's now a problem for many people.