> This worries me. I greatly value Western ideals—freedom of speech, democracy, individual rights. These things matter.

Hmm I don't know about those so called "western values" - seems to me there's a lot of hypocrisy in western nations, where we look down on so called authoritarian societies as wrong or even evil. As TFA says, it looks like the Chinese government is delivering for its people, while it's clear that western democracies are not.