| What sources are there? > China was already developing economically and technologically That's an odd version of history. China just went through WWII, including the awful Japanese invasion, which interrupted a massive civil war that restarted afterward, and which followed decades without a real national government. > there was a large migration of Chinese to the area after it came under Japanese control Japanese control didn't work out well for Chinese people, to say the least. > keeping all the elites in charge The elites had led China to disaster for a century, 'the century of humiliation' it's called (though blaming outside forces, which do deserve some blame). > replacing them with new ones Here we agree. > would have been better Certainly there is no source that can more than guess at that. The better option would have been true democratic reform. It has worked superbly well in parts of China - Taiwan and Hong Kong. It was starting to work in 1989, and leaning in that direction before Xi. |