It’s about the caliber of the civilians. Most high ranking current CCP officials in China are engineers. In our case if we don’t put subject matter experts, even from the military, we can’t expect top results of oversight from a technical point of view. Regardless of military or civilian. Now, it’s more likely a person in the civilian world, with decades of training in their field is better able to manage highly specialized industrial projects, over retired military officers, assigned to manage a task, they may have only gotten months of training on.
This is why China had the 1000 talents program. Top subject matter experts leading and overseeing programs. The result was 7000 of the world’s best talents from across all ethnic Chinese populations, at home or abroad came and lead programs and made sure they worked. Was there incompetence, probably not more than any other technical staff could do. Was there corruption, perhaps, but programs were done quickly and probably within a budget.
This is why I recommend the book on Japan’s “MITI”, laying out how Japan, with their warrior/post-warrior led society, incorporated their best trained talent, to modernize.
Finally, this is not about political party, but technocrats that work regardless of which party is in government or whether the government is civilian or military or hybrid. But these top talented people, by and large want a system that works to provide stability and longevity, so that what they invest in the system, endures and if a better choice of place to lay down roots, for them and their families.
Pakistan should ask China to survey some of their 1000 talents people, and learn what brings people to contribute, even when the country is a one party state. Learn from East Asian societies, but also learn from Nordic countries, that built themselves up like Sweden. See the book Riding the wave about how Sweden developed over the last 200 years, from farming backwater to one that punches above what its demographic weight would make you believe.
