> Second, the governmental structures of China and Russia are a terrible
> model for the world to follow.
Developmental states are not the same thing as the governments which spawn them, nor are they fixed in structure forever - they include things like social networks, civic participation, environmental regulations, cultural commons, science and technology, etc. China has quite a sophisticated developmental state, Russia and Venezuela are still in the midst of creating such states, and it looks like Brazil is just beginning the process (Brazil experts, correct me if I'm wrong).
But this isn't the Cold War model of exporting static ideologies or systems - what's happening is that the semi-periphery is learning from itself, through trade, tourism, institutional contacts, and flows of media. So it's not that Poland, for example, simply adopted the EU way of doing things. Rather, Poland looked at what Spain did, what Ireland did, what Finland did, and copied what it needed. Russia is borrowing from Singapore (electronics zones) and France (aviation holding companies). Vietnam is borrowing from Shenzhen, China (export processing) and Taiwan (rural industrialization).
-- DRR