[unishark]

> China is a ridiculously protectionist state - people in the west had theorized that the market would force China to more opennness and democracy back in the day.

The Chinese government has almost completely lost control of its market. They can control (and profit massively from) very narrow things like blocking foreign servers on their internet (which happens to include our largest tech companies) but otherwise it is very much the wild west over there. The political system has chinese characteristics, but the wildfire of capitalism going in is just plain capitalism, and more so than in the US in some ways.

As for whether the government can survive, this is a complicated question but sooner or later an opposition group always defeats the rulers. I wound't write this ending off yet. Or ever, really.