It is often said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Something similar applies to western thinking about the People’s Republic of China. When that country’s rulers embarked on their astonishing programme of industrialisation, we said that if they wanted capitalism (and they clearly did) then they would have to have democracy. Their response: we’ll have the capitalism but we’ll give the democracy stuff a miss.
Then, in the 1990s, when they decided that they wanted the internet, Bill Clinton and co opined that if they wanted the net then they would also have to have openness (and, therefore, ultimately, democracy). As before, they went for the internet but passed on the openness bit. And then they went on to build the only technological sector that rivals that of the US and could, conceivably, surpass it in due course.
