China is democratic OTL, though
Hmmm. Well yes the local congresses are selected vide elections and from all those are competitive.Nope. The mainland.
In 1905, acting on Yuan Shikai's advice, Dowager-Empress Cixi issued a decree ending the traditional Confucian examination system that was formalized in 1906. She ordered the Ministry of Education to implement a system of primary and secondary schools and universities with a state-mandated curriculum, modeled after the educational system of Meiji-period Japan. This decree of 1905 mandated that the various governor generals and viceroys autonomously establish modern schools along Western lines in each province.
The creation of those modern schools had two weird consequences. A lot of those schools harbored Anti-Qing societies that were protected by provincial leaders. The modern school system that replaced the traditional examination system also favored the elite rather than the people, eliminating completely the elements of social mobility that characterized the examination system by making study abroad the decisive stage of Chinese education.
Strangely, the provisions of the 1905 decree guaranteed government jobs for holders of the second and third degree, but left nothing to holders of the first degree. It left millions of rural and poor Chinese with few alternatives to make an honest living. Their limited alternatives included joining the military, participating in local politics, enrolling in modern schools, or becoming bandits and revolutionnaries.
Right-wing government frequently use protectionism to develop its economies: see South Korea for exampleNot happening unless China uses state intervention and protection of infant industries. Free markets in a backwards China will keep China backwards forever, reliant on foreign investment, lacking any kind of domestic industry.
It's people's-democratic. Not exactly the same thing.Nope. The mainland.
Right-wing government frequently use protectionism to develop its economies: see South Korea for example
On "Protecting infant industries" generally, it is useful if you also get the opportunity to export into developed economies and then pursue an export oriented industrialisation, with the safety of a protected home market. Asymmetrical protectionism is great, if you can get it to stick.
It's much less so if the developed countries laugh you out of the room that you should expect to export to them while retaining a closed market.
The USA tended to allow China, South Korea and Japan to export to the USA while having lots of domestic protection, as a foreign policy move against the spread of Communism and to encourage democratic capitalist consumer societies in these nations. (Worked well in Japan and SK, less well in China, where we've ended up with an authoritarian one party state in charge and a fairly well developed economy). (Ref - https://blogs.worldbank.org/growth/past-and-future-export-led-growth - "For geopolitical reasons and out of confidence in its own innovation capacity and competitiveness in high value adding activities, the United States was willing to open its markets to imports from economies in Asia and Europe which were important allies in the Cold War. The vast, efficiently retailed and organized American market proved to be an elastic source of demand and U.S. companies were ready to vacate niches for low end labor intensive imports.")
If that's not the case, and you can't export, "protecting infant industries" is going to get you Galapagos Syndrome or a much slower economic development than you'd get under "The Neoliberal Consensus". (This is probably the case where countries like the US and the UK tried protectionism in the past; foreign competitors responded in kind, and so it didn't particularly help them industrialize at all, probably harmed them).
In any case, a population the size of China can't export it's way to very high GDP / capita...