I loved Steyn's comment on China:
"They'll get old before they get rich." (referring to their negative birth rates).
China has never been a stable country.
Every dynasty created a competing dynasty that destroyed it. The current dynasty is doing the same thing. Is it a defect in the Chinese character that drives them to repeat the cycle of spectacular failure over and over?
The fall of Rome gave birth to the nations of Europe, but the fall of Chinese dynasties only leads to the rise of another dynasty.
Manchu - Nationalist - Maoist... where does the cycle end? Can a leopard lose its spots? The harder they try, the behinder they get.
I hear the CPC is down to 60 million members - in a population that only grows larger. Why aren't all Chinese in the CPC? Probably because 60 million is the limit that a dynasty can reach by bleeding its subjects in present day China.
My guess would be that Chinese dynasties begin to crumble when that max limit is reached.
I mean . . . is there any side to the rise of Red China which is not dark?
In part, democracy itself has been a victim of the country’s economic expansion. However flawed and mismanaged, the country’s rapid growth has bolstered Beijing’s legitimacy and reduced pressure on its ruling elites to liberalize. Democratic transitions in developing countries are often triggered by economic crises blamed on the incompetence and mismanagement of the ancien régime. China hasn’t experienced that crisis yet. Meanwhile, the riches available to the ruling class tend to drown any movement for democratic reform from within the elite. Political power has become more valuable because it can be converted into wealth and privilege unimaginable in the past. At the moment, China’s economic growth is having a perverse effect on democratization: It makes the ruling elite even more reluctant to part with power.
I think that making Red China wealthy was a mistake.