[JMTQp8lwXL]

Re-frame the question: if they could have western style liberal democracy without any bloodshed, would they? The answers you're seeing might be tainted with knowing the path to democracy would be painful, and all else equal, that pain is worse than the current power structure.

[sudosysgen]

There is without any bloodshed and without any bloodshed. The Soviet Union fell down with very little bloodshed, but around 7 million people died from the economic disruption, and the democracy that came from it was rapidly compromised both by local oligarchs and foreign powers in most of it.

I don't think the Chinese would want a fall of the USSR scenario, however little the bloodshed is. Economic disruption can kill a lot of people and there is not even any guarantee the next system would stand on it's own.

[tablespoon]

> There is without any bloodshed and without any bloodshed. The Soviet Union fell down with very little bloodshed, but around 7 million people died from the economic disruption, and the democracy that came from it was rapidly compromised both by local oligarchs and foreign powers in most of it.

But you're comparing apples and oranges.

Russia was still a command economy when the Soviet Union disintegrated, and went straight to democracy and capitalism at the same time with very little transition (IIRC, mainly because of the bad advice of Westerners who were too ideological and infatuated with markets).

China has already made the transition to capitalism, so I don't think a political transition to liberal democracy there would entail the kind of economic disruption Russia experienced.

[sudosysgen]

China has never made a transition to capitalism. Roughly half of the workforce is employed by the State, it's at best state capitalism.

A transition to hard capitalism and a collapse of the government would absolutely bring economic disruption. And China right now is much less self sufficient than Russia was in 1991, and gets its foreign exchange from complex and vulnerable supply chains.

China is also much less educated than Russia was at the time, and would be even more vulnerable to corruption.

[tablespoon]

> A transition to hard capitalism and a collapse of the government would absolutely bring economic disruption.

I mean, one of the takeaways from the experience of Russia is to not repeat the same mistakes. If China makes a transition to liberal democracy, it should continue to protect its state sector for a long time, and draw out any reform of it to minimize economic disruption.

It absolutely should not let a bunch of crazed free marketers come in and "creatively" fuck everything up with a blind application of their ideology.

[caoilte]

Don't forget that western liberal democracies look pretty un-attractive at the moment. When the choice is between a raving loony geriatric dementia patient and Trump a lot of people think they'd be better off without.