I have heard a China expert claim that this is the long-term goal of the Chinese Communist Party - a rich, authoritarian state with economic and (non-political) personal freedoms.

That has to be the CCP’s long-term goal: they want to stay in power, and they need to build a rich citizenry so people don’t get uppity and decide revolution is better than the status quo.

But while Singapore feels more or less like the west, China most definitely does not, and the gap grows wider year after year.

...for the Han Chinese?

Seems like they could start with some more personal freedoms for the Uighurs fairly quickly if the goal was that magnanimous.

They're not giving Han Chinese all that much personal freedom now either, because in addition to this long-term goal, they're also deeply prejudiced against minorities, and care more about staying in power than about humane and smart public policy.

A friend of mine in China talked about how Alicloud is pitching blockchains to the Chinese government for some internal uses. And the interesting thing is that the Singapore gov has already launched a blockchain marketplace for renewable energy and it's not a fintech PR move but a happening phenomenon right now where I've got friends moonlighting as energy salesman. So yeah, that's definitely what's happening now - a rich, authoritarian state with economic freedom in the making. Every year there are a number of selected Chinese officials that would visit Singapore as exchange students to study about city planning and the art of governance.

Even this comment got fluctuated between upvotes and downvotes. Intriguing what the karma inflation does now. I've noticed the downvote behaviour is context-sensitive i.e. in regards to the article's content and the general sentiment around the reception.