More than 40 years ago, Janos Kornai introduced his famous supermarket metaphor. Socioeconomic
systems cannot be constructed from purposely selected features, similar to customers
in a supermarket, who can freely put into their shopping trolley whatever they like.
Systems constitute an organic whole. They contain good and bad features in fixed proportions.
After 1990, Kornai and most Western commentators expected that as market integration
and private property expand, China would eventually turn into a liberal democracy.
Prior to the worldwide fall of communism, Kornai had three primary criteria to determine
whether a country was socialist or capitalist; later he amended this with six secondary
ones. The present paper introduces into this list an additional 11 criteria-i.e. 20
quantifiable metrics altogether. Kornai was among the very first to recognize that
with President Xi Jinping taking charge, China made a U-turn. While capitalist elements
remain strong, in the final analysis, the country is on its way back to where it was
before 1978.
