Yes, communist nations especially need to protect the narrative that their way is the best way. Having the Taiwanese sitting off shore thriving outside of party control is embarrassing.
On a daily basis here on HN, capitalists and libertarians and others with the SV mindset work hard to protect the narrative that their way is the best way.
I'm so happy to live in the US, a country without ceaseless propaganda about how our way of life is the best and our democracy is the best and our freedom is the only way and there is no alternative to unfettered capitalism.
The entire justification for Musk's DOGE & MAGA is that the status quo in the USA is not good and needs to be torn down.
From my observation, the West suffers from the opposite of Chinese or Indian nationalism, in excessive self-flagellation to the point of self-destructiveness. Critical Theory, Identity Politics, Woke, Anti-Woke, Postmodernism (both left & right), etc would be immediately crushed in those nationalist societies, they are very much a unique artifact of the Western order.
It's really a result of the US being so heterogeneous. One side's status quo is the other side's in-progress radical reinvention. The pendulum is always on the move. You have to take the average position on a longer time scale to figure out where the country stands.
I mean on one hand we can do better but on the other, last I checked there's not been a time where citizens were hauled off to prison in the US for disparaging capitalism. Closest we came was the red scare in the 50s and that was tame in comparison to what Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot and Castro and Ho Chi Minh and (do I need to keep going?) put their subjects through.
On the other hand, historically speaking, the various dynasties of China had been able tightly control markets when it was one of the jewels of the Silk Roads.
I prefer a free market myself, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking there isn't a narrative being pushed by people who profit off of free markets or capitalism.
