[chillacy]

The mainstream view in America has been that political liberalization necessarily means "one person one vote democracy". Most can see China's economic progress, but early on there was hope that economic progress would lead to social reforms too.

Speaking of people not being able to see it...

Lee Kwan Yew gave a pretty fantastic speech to journalists where he basically covered, from first principles, why his country had different laws around freedom of press and how other channels of accountability exist in Singapore to compensate. Then the journalists proceed to ask pretty dumb questions framed as "singapore is a dictatorship because it has no free press".

https://www.c-span.org/video/?2217-1/world-perspective-press