There’s an excellent column by Gideon Rachman coming out in tomorrow’s Financial Times comparing the “Illiberal Capitalist” models of Russia and China:

But for all these differences, there are also increasingly strong similarities between the official ideologies of Russia and China. This is no longer because they both pay lip-service to a common set of Marxist-Leninist texts. Instead, it looks as if their ruling elites have arrived at similar ideas in reaction to similar economic and political pressures. The end product is a new, quasi-authoritarian ideology which – allied with economic success – could attract adherents. Writing in a recent edition of Foreign Affairs, Azar Gat, an Israeli academic, suggests that if western democracies run into economic problems, a “successful non-democratic Second World could then be regarded by many as an attractive alternative to liberal democracy.”