> Now that people have a decent life standard, they should, and probably will, raise against injustices being committed by the governing party.
This has not happened at all in the US with 5X the income per capita (at least in nominal terms), why are you expecting to happen in China?Maybe the relationship is inverse, the more money the Chinese have the less probable they will rebel, same as in America and the rest of the world
> It is really painful to see China moving back to authoritarianism in this way after a couple of decades in which it looked like they were embracing, slowly but surely, more freedoms and human rights.
No country moves in a straight line (assuming you can even trace its "movement"), you should notice that easily with the US. Compared to 30 years ago China is better in almost all indicators, and yes that includes things like freedom of expression, because despite of still having an iron hand on censorship the CCP cannot avoid the common folk to communicate among themselves in million ways. Western people are too naive or arrogant if they think the regular Chinese just buy wholesale everything that is told. This does not mean the other naive take of course, that they dont buy anything that the politicians say and they will align with the western countries if they just had the chance. It turns out, surprise surprise, chinese are as much people as the Americans.
> The problem is that they have misguided fears of what may happen if the people is given too much freedom and try to mercilessly prevent their fears from becoming reality
This fear is not misguided and it is not exclusive to the Chinese by the way. The external threat is very real, and the CCP as every power structure takes very seriously the internal threats too. If you think the US is different I kindly invite you to revise the history on how any political movement not called mainstream Democrat/Republican party has been treated covertly and in the open by the power structures in America. So again, you are not saying nothing new or particular about China that you could not repeat about your own country.
This has not happened at all in the US with 5X the income per capita (at least in nominal terms), why are you expecting to happen in China?Maybe the relationship is inverse, the more money the Chinese have the less probable they will rebel, same as in America and the rest of the world
> It is really painful to see China moving back to authoritarianism in this way after a couple of decades in which it looked like they were embracing, slowly but surely, more freedoms and human rights.
No country moves in a straight line (assuming you can even trace its "movement"), you should notice that easily with the US. Compared to 30 years ago China is better in almost all indicators, and yes that includes things like freedom of expression, because despite of still having an iron hand on censorship the CCP cannot avoid the common folk to communicate among themselves in million ways. Western people are too naive or arrogant if they think the regular Chinese just buy wholesale everything that is told. This does not mean the other naive take of course, that they dont buy anything that the politicians say and they will align with the western countries if they just had the chance. It turns out, surprise surprise, chinese are as much people as the Americans.
> The problem is that they have misguided fears of what may happen if the people is given too much freedom and try to mercilessly prevent their fears from becoming reality
This fear is not misguided and it is not exclusive to the Chinese by the way. The external threat is very real, and the CCP as every power structure takes very seriously the internal threats too. If you think the US is different I kindly invite you to revise the history on how any political movement not called mainstream Democrat/Republican party has been treated covertly and in the open by the power structures in America. So again, you are not saying nothing new or particular about China that you could not repeat about your own country.