Political Thoughts from Pakistan

Leaving aside the moral and functional (non) desirability of parliamentary democracy in ethnically fractured societies... let's analyze China’s political economy... Source.
It is a skilled, efficient, and meritocratically recruited bureaucracy. This bureaucracy (which is the primary beneficiary of the system) has as its main duty to maintain stability and the integrity of the country, as well as to promote economic growth. Its feature is the absence of rule of law i.e. its unequivocal application. This is necessary to ensure that businessmen (or provincial chieftains) are never in a position to become primary drivers of government behaviour, which they would if a stable and consistent application of law was ensured. Instead, the state retains authority and autonomy precisely because it can choose to apply the law to whomever and wherever it wishes. It is apparent that these two main features are in permanent contradiction. How can you have a technocratic and meritocratic bureaucracy at the same time as the transient absence of rule of law? Therefore, the system is always in a precarious equilibrium.

J's corollary: More than a precarious equilibrium, the system is rapidly evolving to a one-man hereditary Emperor + meritocratic mandarinate, which seems to me the natural political order of China.