[plinkplonk]

" "Communist China" is not some dark gulag where people are beaten while walking down the street for having vaguely pro-democracy thoughts or something."

No it is just a dark gulag where people are arrested and then beaten for expressing or acting on vaguely pro-democracy thoughts.

People still disappear in China into "re education camps" and are never seen again and are beaten, tortured and killed. Other than that, sure, it is "just" "an autocratic state, it has some definite problems"

The govt is a repressive dictatorship with a horrific human rights record. The fact that outsiders can make money there, while they can't (today) in say, North Korea, doesn't change the essential nature of the beast. Dictatorships can be great places for non citizens who are treated well and can always leave if they want to. Except that the jews/communists/gypsies/homosexuals etc were killed in their millions, Nazi Germany was a great place to live and work in(See IBM and the Holocaust), as long as you didn't challenge the gang of thugs ruling the country.