>China's incredible transformation

There's nothing incredible about a GDP per capita of $15k, less than half the GDP of Korea, Japan or Taiwan. Slightly less even than places like Romania and Turkey. The only thing impressive about it that China's population is so large that the absolute GDP can be high even when the GDP per person is low. But the purpose of a government/economic system is to improve the standard of living of its citizens, and by that metric China is far behind other East Asian nations.