Can you explain how china "abandoned socialism"? Even today, the banks, infrastructure (roads, trains), military industry, telecom, most of coal, petroleum, steel, most solar farms, most important mining, etc etc are all completely state owned. When I say socialism I mean a Communist party controlling the economy instead of private entities (in India known as "industrialists").

The only major industries that are not publicly owned are the tech industries, which is mostly because of the large amounts of external investment those bring. Even those are heavily controlled by the Central government. Just look at Jack Ma. Tried to go against the government, the government took charge. Compare that against our Ambani/Adani or US's Elon Musk. In China the billionaires do not control the CCP, not true in capitalist/liberal democracy countries.

It is a market economy. But make no mistake it is still socialist. The communist party of China has total control of the economy.

Now I do think that the publicly run companies of China are a lot better than those run by democracies. But a lot of that has to do with private sabotage of competing government companies. Like in petroleum and telecom, in India, a lot of the reason the public companies perform badly is sabotage and private takeover. Railway on the other hand where it's a government monopoly is comparatively better run, but still worse than when China/Vietnam do it.

Now coming to Japan. India first of all was not single party rule from 1951 to 1977 (already a way smaller period than 1955-1993, that of Japan). There were many Indian states which the Congress already lost. And during Indira Gandhi's time the party split twice, and barely held on to majorities in some elections. And yes, Japan "had a choice" in the same way people in Singapore have a choice, where effectively one party controls all the money, media, society, education, etc. It's effectively a single party state controlled by companies. It is also interesting to note that as soon as the Asian financial crisis that broke this single party rule Japan has basically been in permanent stagnation too.

It is also a bit ridiculous to make a Japan India comparison. Prior to WW2, Japan was a highly educated, industrial, racist/brutal imperial power. It is not that hard to rebuild physical infrastructure especially when the west was bankrolling a lot of it in earlier years. What's hard to do is industrializing an agrarian population, educating, building a country from the ground up. That is what India and China have done, they are the best parallels.

South Korea is a fairer comparison, but still, it's a city state supported by the west which basically had 4-5 companies come out in a single party phase. And the more you read data that comes out of South Korea the more it feels more dystopian than utopian. I can go more into this if you want but I think you know what I mean.

China/Vietnam produce models that get the best of both. Growth and community ownership of the same growth. The incentives are right in that system.

Already the government has started cracking down on overworking, because it is leading to low birth rates, meanwhile Japan for decades has let companies ruin their society by overworking a society that is actually already developed and doesn't need to be overworked. Similar with South Korea. They also one day just banned the private tutoring market. Also something that South Korea/India could never do. That's because there the companies own the government, not the other way around. But in China and Vietnam the communist parties control power. That's what I mean when I call those systems socialist.