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China at least has a ruling class, power isn’t completely concentrated in one person (Xi still has to negotiate between the few ruling red families and factions). I guess from that perspective, one could say there are no true dictatorships, only countries that register less or more in the dictatorship scale.

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That's true of many of these arab regimes as well. Hence MBS' consolidation of power recently, for example. A monarchy is meaningless if you can blow off the power of the monarch. I am deeply sympathetic to the plight of their peoples.

Sure. But all these authoritarian regimes are authoritarian in their own ways. Dictatorship specifically means power concentrated in one individual, and that is almost an impossible bar to pass these days; power is necessarily diffused into a few or more power brokers, but the result is the same to the people.

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