I am honored to have been mistaken for boilerplate! Thank you. In truth, this morning I woke up, read the claim, "I don't think China is any more evil than the US," and decided to examine it. What followed was 100% my own words, off the cuff, based on reading Wikipedia and their citations and sources. (For what it's worth, not much of this resembles what I remember studying when I was younger; "modern" Chinese history focused on Mao and Deng.) I stopped after I realized that no amount of refactoring would revive footnote 14.

Please don't make insinuations about astroturfing. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you think that these aren't fresh words, then please explain where they came from.

Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. Do you have commentary on the state of human rights in China?