“Have individual freedoms come a long way since Mao’s death? Sure have!”
This is a fundamental error that is often made by someone who has never lived under a dictatorship and does not fathom the true nature of their own freedom.
There has been no real advance of real freedoms in China, and the Chinese people themselves, better than anyone, understand this.
All the “new stuff” they are permitted to do are privileges granted by the dictatorship, not rights and true freedoms as we know such things to be here. Do those privileges make many things “better”, for now. Sure. But, as privileges, as opposed to rights and freedoms, they are subject to any level of revocation, whenever it suits an individual or general need of those in power; and, on an individual level they often are.
The Chinese serfs now have a more substantial, more elegant and tidy, healthier and more useful cage. Isn’t that great!!!!
If there was a way to build a huge toilet...big enough to hold all chinese politicians and military....and a way for me to jump on the “flush” handle....I would give up my life’s savings to jump on the handle and watch their evil go down to be with their sibling Sh*t.
There is no question that these ‘new freedoms’ in China are very fragile as one would expect in a developing country. But really, when you think about it, any degree of religious and political freedom in any country is fragile. Even in the U.S., the bastion of freedom, we see threats to our personal freedoms from the government albeit they are quite small at the moment. I am not trying to compare the US to China but I do believe that in the next 30 years, we will see much more improvement in the area of freedom and human rights in China.
I disagree with you when you say that Chinese people understand that “there has been no real advance of real freedoms in China.” Most Chinese people that I know do recognize the important changes in China to the degree that many of them think that everything here is just ‘terrific now.’ Of course, I do not agree with that. As many have mentioned, China still has a totalitarian government that does suspend the freedoms that they claim to bestow upon the people quite frequently. China does have a long way to go but compared to 30 years ago, Chinese people feel a lot freer than now. That’s what they say, at least.