Once leaders reach the pinnacle of political power, they can plan for the long term and make decisions that take into account the interests of all relevant stakeholders, including future generations and people living outside the country; leaders serve 10-year terms and assume (and do their best to guarantee) that the same party will be in power decades into the future. Collective leadership, in the form of the Politburo’s seven-member Standing Committee, ensures that no one leader with outlandish and uninformed views can set wrongheaded policies (such as the disastrous Great Leap Forward when Mao, and only Mao, decided on national policies).

China’s meritocratic process is best suited for a one-party state. In a multiparty system, there is no assurance that strong performance at lower levels of government will be rewarded at higher levels. There’s also less of an incentive to train officials in high-level governance since key personnel change with election cycles. Leaders who need to worry about the next election are more likely to make decisions influenced by short-term political considerations than their counterparts in China. Democratically elected leaders are more vulnerable to the lobbying of powerful special interests, and the interests of non-voters affected by government policies—future generations, for instance—are likely to be sacrificed if they conflict with the interests of voters and campaign funders. Such leaders spend a lot of their time raising money and giving the same campaign speech again and again. In contrast, meritocratically selected leaders are judged by what they do, not what they say.

Of course, there remains a large gap between the China model as an ideal and the political reality.