The interesting thing is that China began as an agrarian economy and quickly modernized via influence/direction of the CCP.

The United States used to have a dominant middle class that was geographically distributed (cities & rural areas inclusive), but the advent of the tech economy has also been having a similar effect here as it did in China: massive wealth accumulation in Tier 1-3 cities and everyone else being largely left behind.

It'll be interesting to see if there's convergence in the next decade or so, especially with the GOP reducing regulation and increasing the explicit capitalist priorities here. TBH, though, as a generally well-informed political outsider, the feeling I have is that the US government is slow, bulky, inefficient, balkanized and overall poorly run compared to the Chinese government. We'll likely either slowly improve authoritarian efficiency and become more like the CCP ... or we'll pivot left and move more toward the EU model, but we're floundering around right now paying lip service to both.

I only see those type of videos on 小红书

Propaganda in China is distributed, decentralized—ie it's the responsibility of every minor bureaucrat, clerk, and white-collar worker to produce and engage with propaganda.

See:

https://collaborate.princeton.edu/en/publications/decentrali...

https://yiqingxu.org/replications/lpxx2025.html

https://cira.exovera.com/conferences/engineers-of-the-human-...