Speaking of history, shouldn't the question be: At any time up to say, around 1970, what would have been the judgment of a reasonably open-minded person? More to the point, if you were Chinese or Vietnamese or Korean at the material point(s) in time, how would you have chosen?
Would you seriously have come down on the side of Chiang Kai Shek and what he stood for in the decades leading up to 1948? On Syngman Rhee, perhaps the choice should be Kim Il Sung and Park Chung Hee who came in on a coup? Thieu was a no contest, period -- as even those looking down at us from the eagle's perch acknowledged when they killed him.
As for the other issue -- "centralisation of an enormous amount of power in the hands of states". In the hands of Chiang or Park, wasn't there also the same? For that matter, Singapore, that regular near top of the list of free economies... as also, when there's more honesty about it, one of the most successful -- by conventional measures -- statist schemes in the world (pace the paeans of praise for Scott's Seeing like a state), now running into some road blocks.
Perhaps a little less ideology, a little less of the eagle's perch, and a little more actual history might help?
kj khoo