They are rich in money and we have been helping them. It's time we treated them as Reagan did the Soviet Union and, as painful for us as it would be, pulled the market and support out from under them.
IMHO, it will be much, much more painful at a later date for us if we do not.
"It collapsed in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union due to it failing abjectly economically, he;ped along in large measure by Reagan and Thatcher IMHO. Red China has not suffered from either of those issues to date."
Actually the collapse of teh Soviet Union is because they're ideologues -- they followed the Marxist path to death AND they joined in the arms race with the US by building more nukes and crippling their already feeble economy. Had they ignore the arms race and move toward a market economy, the result would have been very different.
Deng realized this in 1981, that the communist economy simply won't work. If he hadn't reformed the economy, the 1989 protest would have turned into a revolution similar to Eastern Europe, though the results will not be democracy but other form of dictatorship. China is still, in my opinion, not yet ready for democracy. It needs rule of law first.
"It's time we treated them as Reagan did the Soviet Union and, as painful for us as it would be, pulled the market and support out from under them."
I agree, but as you've noted, that's easier said than done. However, it looks like Japan has begun doing just that in response to the wave of anti-Japanese sentiment that has stormed through the country lately.
That will be a heavy price to pay for China.