Just anecdotally, I worked for a short period of time in China, and was simply stunned by the level of public investment that was occurring. There is so much we could do if we had the political power to do anything. Also, my colleagues were pretty open about their collective sigh of relief that the nightmare their parents went through was long over, their anxiety that it could return, and their enthusiasm for the current path. Of course this was a rather nonrandom sample of tech workers, so there is that. My opinion is that I have no idea if China will end up being AES, but at least it represents an intention to do so, and an alternative to the dominant system.