[conanbatt]

> Until China fixes their government, they will never be taken seriously on the same level of other "first world" countries.

I think russia has been taken seriously for a century now, with not better track record. What makes your country be taken seriously is your military strength, which is your capacity to flip-off any other country that tries to take political advantage over you.

> I wonder what Chinese people think about the odds of any of this improving.

What I think is that the vast majority of chinese don't care about this topic at all, and would rather not think about it. Remember, most of them dont know about Tiananmen square, not because the government censored it, but because they don't care about it.

[krsrhe]

How do you know the difference between not caring and not being given any information they could care about?

[conanbatt]

I've asked this question to people that live in china, which is very anecdotal.

In the modern age, it's impossible to keep information out. Any chinese person that left the country has had access to this information, and could have disseminated with virtually no effort.