| >> Maybe communism vs freedom? > That’s a false dichotomy. China is ostensibly commmunist but free market is alive and well (with heavy doses of state directed influence, but so as in other western countries, witness the military industrial complex) "Freedom" does not mean only the "free market." China is certainly against many things Westerners would consider necessary for freedom: > Communist Party cadres have filled meeting halls around China to hear a somber, secretive warning issued by senior leaders. Power could escape their grip, they have been told, unless the party eradicates seven subversive currents coursing through Chinese society. > These seven perils were enumerated in a memo, referred to as Document No. 9, that bears the unmistakable imprimatur of Xi Jinping, China’s new top leader. The first was “Western constitutional democracy”; others included promoting “universal values” of human rights, Western-inspired notions of media independence and civic participation, ardently pro-market “neo-liberalism,” and “nihilist” criticisms of the party’s traumatic past. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/chinas-new-lea... The Chinese communist party literally opposed to constitutional democracy (meaning checks on its power), human rights and accurate, nonpartisan history. |