[umanwizard]

To add to what others said, the Chinese government is a bit obsessed with the Soviet collapse, which many in the Chinese system see as having been causes by liberalizing too quickly. Gorbachev allowed freedom of speech and the Union disintegrated soon after, and that was before we had communication force multipliers like the Internet.

It's not necessarily completely self serving; many Chinese leaders do have their people's interests at heart. (Not all do, of course.) It's easy to argue that the many of the former Soviet republics are doing much worse now than they were in 1989.