Times feature on how China became a superpower

The NYT has a China feature with several articles. 

On how the bureaucracy was tamed and channeled to the growth agenda,

Bureaucrats who were once obstacles to growth became engines of growth. Officials devoted to class warfare and price controls began chasing investment and promoting private enterprise. Every day now, the leader of a Chinese district, city or province makes a pitch like the one Yan Chaojun made at a business forum in September. “Sanya,” Mr. Yan said, referring to the southern resort town he leads, “must be a good butler, nanny, driver and cleaning person for businesses, and welcome investment from foreign companies.” It was a remarkable act of reinvention, one that eluded the Soviets. In both China and the Soviet Union, vast Stalinist bureaucracies had smothered economic growth, with officials who wielded unchecked power resisting change that threatened their privileges... Afraid to open up politically but unwilling to stand still, the party found another way. It moved gradually and followed the pattern of the compromise... which left the planned economy intact while allowing a market economy to flourish and outgrow it.

Examples of the now famous "crossing the river by feeling the stones" approach

Factories should meet state quotas but sell anything extra they made at any price they chose. It was a clever, quietly radical proposal to undercut the planned economy... allowing farmers to grow and sell their own crops, for example, while retaining state ownership of the land; lifting investment restrictions in “special economic zones,” while leaving them in place in the rest of the country; or introducing privatization by selling only minority stakes in state firms at first.

This approach has been followed on the political side too,

But in reality, the party made changes after Mao’s death that fell short of free elections or independent courts yet were nevertheless significant. The party introduced term limits and mandatory retirement ages, for example, making it easier to flush out incompetent officials. And it revamped the internal report cards it used to evaluate local leaders for promotions and bonuses, focusing them almost exclusively on concrete economic targets. These seemingly minor adjustments had an outsize impact, injecting a dose of accountability — and competition — into the political system, said Yuen Yuen Ang, a political scientist at the University of Michigan. “China created a unique hybrid,” she said, “an autocracy with democratic characteristics.”

Sample this on the growth of China's school tutoring market,

In cities like Shanghai, Chinese schoolchildren outperform peers around the world. For many parents, though, even that is not enough. Because of new wealth, a traditional emphasis on education as a path to social mobility and the state’s hypercompetitive college entrance exam, most students also enroll in after-school tutoring programs — a market worth $125 billion, according to one study, or as much as half the government’s annual military budget.

On the role of private sector,

The private sector now produces more than 60 percent of the nation’s economic output, employs over 80 percent of workers in cities and towns, and generates 90 percent of new jobs, a senior official said in a speech last year.

On China's role as the builder-in-chief with nearly 600 projects across, mainly, developing countries,

41 pipelines and other oil and gas infrastructure help China secure valuable resources. 203 bridges, roads and railways create new ways for China to move its goods around the world. 199 power plants — for nuclear, natural gas, coal and renewables — give China new markets for its construction and equipment companies... at least 63 power plants financed by China around the world, which collectively pollute more than Spain.

On its efforts to reshape the global narrative on China in popular media,

Of the top 100 highest-grossing films worldwide each year from 1997 to 2013, China helped finance only 12 Hollywood movies. But in the five years that followed, China co-financed 41 top-grossing Hollywood films... Perhaps most central to China’s soft power push is CGTN, the international arm of the state broadcaster CCTV. With employees from more than 70 countries and regions working on television channels broadcasting in English, Spanish, French, Arabic and Russian, CGTN’s mission is to report news for global audiences “from a Chinese perspective.”

On China's progress up the manufacturing value chain from 2000 to 2016,

On the evolution of the country's internet landscape,

It is years ahead of the United States in replacing paper money with smartphone payments, turning tech giants into vital gatekeepers of the consumer economy. And it is host to a supernova of creative expression — in short videos, podcasts, blogs and streaming TV — that ought to dispel any notions of Chinese culture as drearily conformist. All this, on a patch of cyberspace that is walled off from Facebook and Google, policed by tens of thousands of censors and subject to strict controls on how data is collected, stored and shared... In China, there is pretty much only one rule, and it is simple: Don’t undermine the state. So.. unwanted beliefs and ideologies are kept out. Beyond that, everything is fair game. Start-ups can achieve mammoth scale with astonishing speed; they can also crash brutally. Thanks to weak intellectual property protections, they can rip one another off with abandon — not great for rewarding innovation, but O.K. for consumers, who get lots of choices...

Little remains of daily life that has not been transformed. Shopping. Getting a loan. Renting a bike. Even going to the doctor. This level of clout hasn’t gone unnoticed by China’s leaders. Never in the Communist era have private entities wielded such influence over people’s lives. To keep tech in its place, the government is demanding stakes in companies and influence over management. Regulators have reprimanded online platforms for hosting content they deem distasteful — too raunchy, too flirty, too creepy or just too weird. That’s why the best way for tech companies to thrive in China is to make themselves useful to the state. Nearly everyone in China uses WeChat, making the social network a great way for the authorities to police what people say and do. SenseTime, whose facial recognition technology powers those fun filters in video apps, also sells software to law enforcement.

The results of all this have been truly impressive,

Eight hundred million people have risen out of poverty. That’s two and a half times the population of the United States... Chinese men born in 2013 are expected to live more than seven years longer than those born in 1990; women are expected to live nearly 10 years longer... China used to make up much of the world’s poor. Now it makes up much of the world’s middle class.