China's situation is like someone trying to dilute acid with water: put in a few drops of freedom, wait for the fizzing to subside, put in a few more, all while hoping to avoid an explosion.
China is accepted by the Han populace. The extremely non-Han parts (Tibet, Xinjiang) are having it imposed on them at gunpoint.
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“Only” doesn’t seem like the right word to describe extremely effective use of a limited hand. If they hadn’t realized how far the hitherto anti-Russian GOP would go to gain control they’d have had to spend orders of magnitude more money to damage the U.S. as badly as electing Trump did.
Re:Why Technology Favors Tyranny
by village-idiot on Tuesday September 04, 2018 @10:33AM
(#17909300)
Everything on the Russian side screams of a desperation play.
What’s more confusing is why the GOP decided to play ball with them instead of telling them to pound sand. It’s not like the GOP was struggling to hold onto power, they’ve got control of 2 branches and most state governments.
China is a far better case for your thesis. They’re doing much better economically and the government is both totalitarian and largely accepted by the populace. This situation is also very new, since they accepted open markets at least, and it will be interesting to see how stable it really is.