ABANDONING COMMUNISM FOR CAPITALISM
China and Russia have mostly abandoned state control of the economy, instead shifting towards free market models, with some state control and a high-degree of state power (should they wish to intervene). The governments of both economies still retain state-controlled mega-firms, such as Gazprom (RU) and PetroChina (CH), the latter of which recently was pronounced the largest company on earth (US$1trillion). Though both countries are far from capitalist, it is comparable with other developed economies (eg. not nearly as laissez-faire as Hong Kong, but comparable to the US).
TRICKLE DOWN EFFECT & SAVING MILLIONS
Laws within the states are meticulously planned so that they favour the wealthy and powerful, as to not let peasants and the poor obstruct the advances of the nation (take it as you will). They largely put their faith in the trickle-down effect Milton Friedman described, which is when GDP grows, the positive effects (eg. rising standards of living) will ‘trickle’ down to the bottom of the economy, given enough time. For example, China, at its economic peak, lifted 1 million Chinese peasants out of poverty a month (that is one monstrous economic machine!).
MEDIA CONTROL, WITH AN EXAMPLE
This is where China and Russia differs greatly. China is powerful enough to either tell the truth to their citizens or censor everything – everyone knows what they’ve been doing. On the other hand, Russia opts to control the media through the Kremlin, which effectively controls 80% of the media in RU. Both of these devices allow them to end external and internal disturbances. For example, Japan recently issued a warning on a particular type of Chinese product as a political attack (claiming there were too-high levels of some dangerous substance). Almost immediately afterwards, China issued a warning claiming the SK-2 cosmetics brand contained dangerous levels of metal. Riots and protests ensued; anti-Japanese sentiment flared. A few days later the Japanese Govt retracted the statement, claiming it was an internal error — politics is often frivolous! For Russia, considering most ex-KGB (President Vladimir Putin is ex-KGB and surrounds himself with ex-KGB) members now run the country it’s not surprising to see this happening.
‘VETO POWER’ OVER BUSINESS ACTIONS WITHIN THE STATE
Should the political leaders of both nations feel that their power or ‘national security’ has been compromised by a business venture within their nation, they can simply snuff it out. This applies to foreign ventures to, such as when President Putin (RU) stopped a oil exploration and extraction venture, of which British Petroleum (BP) had already spent hundreds of millions of dollars, because they didn’t like the thought of overseas firms investing in Russian interests. Apparently national security was compromised. China is far less devious in this field of control, with them simply telling overseas investors outright that overseas citizens cannot hold a majority or even a large minority stake in a firm (stockmarket).
FOCUS ON PRODUCTION, BUT SHIFTING TOWARDS TERTIARY SECTORS
The primary and secondary sectors (i.e. production of goods & services) is the current focus of both economies. However, their governments have realised that although it is important to the domination of their political parties not to shift production overseas, that services [tertiary sector] are higher up the add-value chain and will better enrich their economies. There is still a massive – but waning – focus on primary sector production (eg. oil).

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