But anyone coming from the Western world, and agreeing with what their government is doing in terms of censorship, that I can't understand.

India will eventually show them eventually up as having an inferior political model but on balance I can see how an evidence-based person would conclude that China's government is working well, on the basis that it presided over the fastest leap forward in living standards in human history. I'd still rather live in Europe, India or America though.

I doubt it. If anything India's system is less effective, equally or more corrupt, and downright barbarous in some social aspects (e.g. castes). Plus the rampant inequality which is much worse than China.

So, on the long term, I am optimistic that India will catch up. Especially now that the USA is moving away from China as "work bench".

I hope we here in Europe will follow that policy, too. It just makes much more sense to support an emerging democracy than to support a facist regime.

Singapore disagrees.

They simply bankrupt the opposition through lawsuits and void their candidacy. That is not a functioning democracy.

Though, I mean, part of that difference is that the rest of the world feels uncomfortable with sudden shifts like India's, and so usually gets together to trade-sanction the problem away so that things will go back to the way they were (which might cause the country to lash out, at which point it becomes a World War); while, on the other hand, the international community is so used to "the way things are" with countries like China, that they don't do anything.

See, I have the better argument!

Indeed, in the 50’s and 60’s it seemed plausible that the economies of North Korea, Cuba, Russia, the DDR were all going to surpass their Western counterparts before long. The wheels started to come off in the 70’s and by the 90’s it was all over for them.

Do you not realise just how large the Communist world was back then? The USSR alone was vast. Now China and North Korea are all that’s left.

Having lived in Singapore, Hong Kong (current) and China, I can tell you that in Singapore's case, folks are aware that they live under a semi-dictatorship, that their government controls all media (radio, tv, everything is state-owned). But they always say "but I guess the government is doing a good job".

One has nothing to do with the other. The government can do a good job without the dictatorship, but it's the way folks rationalize their helplessness, their sense of lack of control over their fate.

This is also why we in Hong Kong ARE fighting against these kind of controls, probably in vein, but I for one do NOT want to resign in rationalizing for the government's over-control without a fight.

Just out of curiosity, what times are you referring to, when china became dystopian?

Well, have you ever heard of the tiananmen place?

Or ... the "cultural revolution" from Mao himself?

Or the cleansing events after the revolution?

Or, ... before the red revolution, years of bloody civil war, with ruthless warlords taxing even dying of their underlings, or general things in old china like child towers outside of town, where the unwanted babys were thrown to die, so their souls did not haunt the houses of the living?

In other words, you have been sleeping before(or did not bother with china at all), if you only consider the current events the strong ones, that qualify for dystopia.

As far as I can tell they are the most successful government at least in modern history in terms of increasing living standards (huge GDP growth and even things like being the only country to successfully almost eradicate SARS-CoV-2), so it seems they would keep power even in a fully functioning democracy with no censorship since they are so good.

Then maybe the censorship is actually integral to their success as it reduces the time wasted on going in directions different from the government's one and possibly boosts morale and happiness?

Also culturally and from a human rights perspective Taiwan blows the chicoms out of the water.

Taiwan shows what China could have been if they would not have been taken hostage by the communist chinazis.