been in China for decades, benevolent dictatorships allow long term planning, elections every 4 years favor short term decisions, populism and waste a huge percentage of time in after elections and pre-elections
China and Singapore showed democracy is not necessarily the most productive way to run a country
A country shouldn't be a factory. It doesn't need to be "productive".
The election happening once in a while helps ensure if the long term planning is still aligned with the population, because, new people will be born and some others will ‘age out’, the original long term planning might no longer represent the voice of this new set of population.