The Chinese people are not and never have been puppets any more than an elephant or a bronco is a directly controlled puppet of its current rider.
That's a very important point that seems to be completely lost on the majority of FR posters. They see China as some giant, monolithic factory where all of the little Borgs do everything they are told. In reality, as anyone who has been there realizes, it is a miracle the CCP maintains any control over China at all.
"Riding the Tiger" indeed, eh!
There are protests all the time in China, Janice Joplin style. "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."
They don't make the news over here, but they certainly happen.
There's also something liberating about anonymity there.
We are tracked and controlled in the US to a far wider and more accurate extent than most Chinese are, certainly in the lower classes. We have less freedom, because we actually exercise it less, because we have more to lose.
The fact that we are all posting in a "Free Republic" with pseudonyms....?