Partly in response to the post asking "Is India Free?", Bingfeng notes:

one question many chinese asked is, "why a country with western style democracy like india still fall behind china in terms of social and economic development levels while authoritative governments like hongkong and singapore made such great progress?" just to remind you that in their minds, such ideology serves only as a tool not as an end.

I responded:

In my mind, it’s about ‘freedom,’ ‘clean government,’ and ‘rule of law.’ Both Singapore and Hong Kong have developed legal systems and low rates of corruption. Both have economic freedom. Hong Kong also has more personal freedoms than most countries (the inability to elect a government being the only real stain on the territory’s freedom ranking). India, meanwhile, has a more serious corruption problem and a rather large lack of personal freedoms for a democracy (ed: meaning both economic and personal freedoms). The question to ask about China is not how well it measures up to Singapore and Hong Kong in terms of being authoritarian, but how well it measures up in terms of ‘freedom,’ ‘clean government,’ and ‘rule of law.’

Discuss.