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The thing though is that until recently, one could argue that China was going in the right direction... The liberal faction was much more tolerable to HKers... The current government with Xi Jinping is a relapse to a more despotic regimes...

It's also not true, Chiang Kai-shek's son inherited the power from his father but paved the way to Democracy so sometimes despot regimes actually do progress for the better.

Was China better 30 years ago? Didn't we just see the 30 year anniversary of tiananmen square..

500,000,000+ people taken out of extreme poverty is generally considered a slight improvement.

Fair point :)

Problem here is the definition of 'better'. We'd need to find a common ground of agreement on that before deciding if it is better now or 30 years ago. Perhaps the answer isn't even a simple yes/no.

This is indeed true. I find it quite surprising that most Chinese people in PRC believe that it will, though. I suppose one can have 5000 years of cultural history but that does not imply that lessons have been learned.