The US didn't invite china to anything. The US begged, threatened and cajoled china to open their immense and cheap labor force. China had what the US wanted. It was nixon that went to china, not mao that came to the US.
> The thinking was they would move away from communism and Russia and towards an open Democracy.
That's as stupid as saying we helped saudi arabia, kuwait, qatar, etc develop their oil and gas field so that they will become christian. If your assertion was true, we'd be trading with cuba and north korea today. If your assertion was true, we would have been top trading partners with the soviet union. Instead we isolated the soviet union and sanctioned them. Did we only want china to be a democracy? Not the north koreans, cubans and soviets?
> Such as the Democracy movements in the 80s that were ultimately crushed in Tiananmen square.
'Democracy' movement. Right. And look where china is today? I think china made the right decision to crush the 'democracy' movement. Don't you?
It's the same debunked propaganda I've been hearing from the likes of gordon chang since the early 2000s. Morons actually believed we invaded iraq to bring freedom and democracy. So it shouldn't be surprising that morons believe we exploited their cheap labor to bring democracy to china. It's cringe level propaganda.