First I would like to say that it is obvious that China has a lot to improve on in this department. But it is not quite as simple as the media generally portrays, I think.

First, the U.S. had something called a “civil war” when the South wanted to secede. The same arguments of sovereignty that apply to Tibet today applied to the South back then. If you don’t feel that the civil war is the best example, think about the battles to keep Texas, Spain’s battles for the Phillippines, England’s battles to keep Ireland, England’s battles to keep its colonies in the Americas, Russia’s battles to keep the Chechnya (although Russia is not exactly an example of free regime either), Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tigers. The point I make is NOT that China’s actions are “okay by comparison”, but rather that historically, NO COUNTRY has simply given up the perceived right to rule over other people.

Secondly, it is remarkably ethnocentric to feel that the Western policies of running a country, e.g. republic, will work in non-Western countries. India is a representative government, and in the past 20 years it has made very little progress relative to China. If you want to have a representative government for 1.3 billion people (as opposed to a “measly 300 million”) the logistics are much more difficult. Also, consider the relative inefficiencies of Congress. If you want to have a representative government that can take the swift actions necessary to propel a 3rd world out of the 3rd world, I would argue that would be extremely difficult. This is why Russia, recently a representative government, essentially reelected a relatively oppressive Putin who prefers to centralize power (economy was not managed well under Yelsin). The inherent danger is not that you get a competent iron-fisted ruler (for the economy), it is that you get an incompetent one (Mao, Stalin, were both incompetent for the economy, and yes that is widely acknowledged in China).

Censorship in China is a well-known phenomenon, to its population as well. As far as I can tell, the famous tank photo still shows up multiple times on the first page under images.google.cn. If you want to know why some of the pictures are different, please consider that Tiananmen Square is the most famous square in China’s capital, Beijing. As such, it should be no suprise that the popularity of TS images differ for the Chinese population than for foreign populations. Obviously I am not saying that censorship does not exist or is minimal; censorship is heavy. But in China, and I have been there many times, critcism of the government is abound but muted because and ONLY because of the relative material progress that its citizens have experienced. I’ve seen people pushing police officers without having the crap beaten out of them, etc. You have to consider the censorship relative to the sentiments of the population (which I understand are not two completely independent variables). For example, in the case of Tibet, MOST Chinese people in America that I have spoken to support, or at least understand, the actions of the Chinese government. Also, if you don’t think censorship in the United States exists … you would be clearly mistaken.

So again, what I say is not meant as a defense of China’s civil actions, which I disagree with for the most part, but rather to ask you to consider it in a little more detail than the media portrays. I didn’t originally mean to type this much but it is a bit of a pet peeve when people make those generalized statements—maybe you have considered it carefully but I don’t see that reflected in your post.

What you said is that N. Korea is “so horrible that people jump the border into . . . China . . . I mean, seriously, what does that say?!” The reasons people jump border are 1. economic and 2. civil. To say that you were not at all considering the economic aspect is either disingenuous or stupid. I honestly do not think that most countries in the world are ahead of China right now—probably Western Europe, North America excluding Central America, Australia, and a few select countries (e.g. Singapore) are significantly ahead considering both economic and civil sides together. Last I checked, all those countries added up are <