Good point but the scale and success rate of the way China does it compared to any other democracy, or any country, in the past puts them in a different league entirely. They are on their 15th 5 year plan and look at the results.

A successful planned economy needs an autocratic leader, or a majority of people with foresight and willingness to delay gratification working together. There were very few moments in time when this intersection happened.

The last time someone had real planned economy in Europe was in communism time, with the 5-year plans and those were a joke, paper exercises to please the leaders. Those economies slowly failed. The planning you talk about post-'90 was relatively minor, more like a few ongoing projects.

Populists and corruption invaded the scene and promised the world now, making realists/idealists look even worse. Promise of short term gain is such an easy sell that it organically became the tool of choice for would-be leaders. Worse even, once the former opposition got to power they tore down what was built by the predecessor, started over to shape it in their image, brought in their cronies. This is human nature, the US didn't invent short sightedness or gullibility, they just exploited and monetized these common flaws in people.