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Comment by Aunche | Hacker News Reader

The US has always valued "principle" over actual results. In Iraq, Saddam was "evil", so he had to go, even though it would leave the entire country in the power vacuum and destroy the livelihoods of the average Iraqi. Ditto for Gaddafi in Libya.

This post is much the same way. A poorer China is only going to deteriorate their human rights. A wealthier China is going to crave for more freedom. This happened in South Korea, which many forget used to be a brutal military dictatorship.

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"A wealthier China is going to crave for more freedom."

We've been testing that theory for decades with negative results.

Maybe it works other places, but it doesn't seem to be working in China.

Perhaps you just need to wait longer?

I hope so. But we have to start considering the possibility that we are causing more harm than good.

For instance, if China's economic influence is stifling free speech in the west, that's a pretty disturbing trend.

Given that the USA has federal and state laws preventing and punishing even muttering an idea about not selling to Israel, I'd say you should consider adding a few names to that list.

If its actually free speech you care about.

Baby steps. China has fewer political prisoners than they did during the Cultural Revolution. Crowd control uses rubber bullets instead of metal ones. They even allegedly stopped using execution victims' organs 2015, which is doubtful, but they most likely aren't doing it as often (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_transplantation_in_China).

South Korea achieved democracy when their GDP per capita was $4k. China's GDP per capita is approaching $9k. When will they be rich enough that they yearn for democracy?

The PRC will most likely not escape the Middle Income Trap before their population pyramid massively inverts. No other country has aged so quickly at such a large scale before. Their population and working age groups are at the largest they will ever be right now and will steadily decline starting in 5-10 years.

I think collapse of the current government is more likely than a peaceful ROC-esque (Taiwan) transition from dictatorship to democracy.

I'd argue that the ROC transition was not peaceful at all. Thousands of civilians were killed in the February 28 massacre [1] and tens of thousands imprisoned in the ensuing White Terror [2], and martial law did not end until 30+ years later. But now I think Taiwan is by far the leading democracy in east Asia.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_28_incident [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Taiwan)

Well, "peaceful" relative to historical Chinese government transitions at least. :D

>A poorer China is only going to deteriorate their human rights. A wealthier China is going to crave for more freedom.

This was the lie told to the American people in the 90s to justify PNTR with the PRC. We know it was a bald-faced lie now. Why are you saying this?

> Many forget

They never knew, if lying by omission is a crime, all media is guilty of it.

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