10 years ago or so the story was the opposite: economic progress will lead to a rising middle class, which will lead to more political freedoms.

That’s exactly how it panned out in Korea, Vietnam etc.

China is an outlier because of several reasons but size is perhaps the biggest. Chinese market is so huge it can support China specific versions of everything; the State realized this and used it to effectively control all the new sources of information (mostly internet stuff). No one thought they could do that effectively but hats off to them they did.

Not sure why this is being downvoted, It was absolutely the case being made for why we should be economically involved in China, however it turned out to be dead wrong.

https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2007/08/31/capitalis...

I don't think so. China remained subservient enough during the cultural revolution and the great leap forward.

It's going to be easy now for the party to remain in control.