Traditional Chinese society was delineated into four classes (a common enough pattern around the world): the Jin Shi, which was a class of intellectuals who had passed the examinations; farmers; tradesmen and manufacturers; and merchants. Merchants were at the bottom since they did not make anything.
Modern Chinese society, it occurred to me yesterday, still has a Jin Shi: the Communist Party. The Party, like the traditional Jin Shi, is composed of many people who were born connected, but not necessarily. With sufficient brown-nosing and/or talent for helping subordinate the nation to the Party, anyone can rise to the top. It is clearly not a meritocracy, as in the old system, since there is no test. The test is ideological conformity, which is to say intellectual and moral mediocrity.
The important difference is that the old order–the “ancien regime“–placed moral blocks on the behavior of the elites, at least in theory. Heaven, in its governance of the Earth, was ruled by li. There were certain rules to be followed, and revolution was considered acceptable, if successful, since it, ipso facto, was considered the Will of Heaven.
Communists think the same way. They consider themselves to be just because they are in power. “History” is their version of “li”. History, being whatever happens, necessarily means that whoever wins, by whatever means, is correct. This is roughly the same doctrine, based more explicitly on Darwinian evolutionary theories, that motivated and justified the violence of Hitler.
Communist condemn racism, but they are racist. Look at how they treated the Tibetans. They condemn Guatanamo Bay, but practice torture regularly as a matter of State policy, and as a way of generating the only virtue they recognize: conformity.
So what has happened in China? After tens of millions of unnatural and unnecessary deaths, and the wholesale ruination of billions of lives; after widespread torture, civil wars, and mass suicide, moral assaults on tradition, and the utter corruption of the capacity for rational thought: we have the same class system.
We can argue that manufacturing has overtaken agriculture, as has, possibly, business activity. What has not changed is that an elite is still in power.
This is the progress of idiots and the wicked. They still have kings, dukes, and business oligarchs. The only progress has been out of the hole dug by the Communists, and would have been vastly faster had they not ruined their society in the first place.