Chinese leaders are doing the same thing Goirbachev did with perestroika. And it will end the same way. Must I re-post the link to the massive ghost cities that the brilliant Chinese leaders have constructed?
When you start out with over a billion people living on less than $1,000 per year, and try to micro manage a new pseudo-capitalist economy, well, no one has done it successfully yet. And the signs are the Chinese are not faring any better than the Russians did.
They are already experiencing large scale civil unrest throughout the country, even int the fairly centralized prosperous areas. Economic freedom is necessary for a successful economy. Economic freedom leads inevitably to the desire for political freedom. (Just ask Gorbachev.)
When their economic bubble bursts it is going to make our depression look like economic heaven.