You say this like the United States doesn't engage in its own brand of evil. China is certainly quantitatively worse in terms of executions and human rights abuses but both governments commit atrocities as part of a very rational attempt to maintain power.

In China, this requires the government to be somewhat authoritarian because the government and the people (except for the people of Tibet and Taiwan) want One China. It is only a very recent thing that all of China has been united and in the long term China will be incredibly powerful just by virtue of being one prosperous, populous nation. If China were to convert to democracy and allow free thought overnight, the economy is likely to collapse just like the Soviet Union. This is the model of sudden ideological change that China looks to.

In the long run, China will become more free. Hu Jintao has made a lot of progress and will only do more now that his power base is completely solidified at the current People's 5 Yearly Conference. His Tsinghua Clique (graduates of China's preeminent engineering university, their equivalent of MIT) might even be more competent leaders than the businessmen and lawyers that run America.