[ajross]

> What if you're wrong? You have doubts, where's the evidence?

There's not enough data to make predictions like that. But one very good reason for optimism is that China's current totalitarian stability is an unstable false vacuum. It's sustained by the outrageously rapid economic growth seen in the decades since the cultural revolution.

Basically: if you're Chinese, your grandparents (if they were lucky) survived a devastating world war and invasion by Japan, an even more devastating civil war, and a yet more devastating still famine forced on them by the nutjobs who won the civil war.

And now their grandkids are all running around with smartphones in their pockets, collecting college diplomas and international graduate degrees, vacationing in Thailand and Hawaii, and generally dancing on the world stage like the Americans do.

That kind of success pays for a lot of totalitarian angst. But it won't forever. These folks' kids aren't going to be happy with only 2% GDP growth as payment for their political dominance by a corrupt elite. The proletariat never has been.

[laretluval]

The Chinese proletariat isn’t running around the world colecting foreign graduate degrees; they are working in factories in Shenzhen to feed their children back in the village. But you’re right in that it’s typically privileged young people who are behind liberal revolutions.