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Philip Kuhn proposed three fundamental questions regarding the governance of Qing Empire, which can be neatly extended to other authoritarian governments such as France and Ottoman Empire. The three questions are: (1) how to counterbalance the power of elites at the top level, to prevent them from abusing power? (2) hwo to harness the political energies of the mass of educated people;(3) how to govern a huge, complex society with a small field administration? 
Honestly speaking, the three questions are one: how to govern a state in the absence of constitutional checks and balances and modern technology? 
The solution is simple: (1) faction; (2) priviledges to elites; (3) low tax rates but tolerance for surcharges. ==> low state capacity 
these are all symptoms of low state capacity, not causes. 
But he is right in the sense that a strong state only emerged after the collectivatization movement that eradicated illegal middlemen and made it possible to extract rural surpluses direclty. 
Comparing China's route to a strong fiscal strong state with Western European experience: three things stand out:
(1) the absence of institutional arrangement that ensures credible commitment of the govt;
(2) the early birth of modern bureaucracy;
(3) the late industrialization. 
The European experience: industrialization + constitutional reform ===> strong state 
The authoritarian route to strong state needs to be further theorized.