Quote Originally Posted by TevashSzat View Post
This is just a repost of my rather long post in another thread here with some changes here or there:

I am a native Chinese here and was born in Beijing. I'm a permanent resident in the US atm. Didn't really want to get into the discussion before since frankly, I don't want to spend all that time writing posts as long as this one

Anyways, I'll try to give some thoughts, some anecdotes, and basically give you a Chinese viewpoint

Okay first of all, Communism, imo, works on paper but will never even come close to success in real life which is why the only reason the Chinese government hasn't fallen yet is that right now, it's not really even attempting to keep the Communism ideal; its is just communist in name.

As for why we adopted it, keep this in mind. China has a 5000 year history. We, as a civilization, have been one of the most dominant nations in the world until the modern times. We rivaled the Romans, the Greeks, any ancient civilization you can name and ancient China was probably comparable if not better. In China right now, basically these last 100-150 years were called something like the century of downfall when we went from the best in the world to one of the most underdeveloped ones.

The nationalists, who were in power for about 3-4 decades before WWII. They were democratic, but they had horrible corruption and generally did not rule the country well at all. Once Japan invaded China and WWII began, the nationalists lost horribly and the nation was basically razed. Given China's state at that point, I doubt any government could have done too much better, but the nationalists were the government at that time and their failure created the impetus for the rise of the Communist Party. Now might it have been better had the nationalists survived? Perhaps, but you would never know how world history might have changed.

Now, has the Communist government in the past half a century or so done some terrible things? Yes, without a doubt and the people do know that. However, China is one of the great powers of the world now and is only growing in power, which I don't think anyone can deny. Progress has been made and the average person is living MUCH better than half a century ago. As much as the critics blame the Chinese government for human rights issues, there is no doubt that the country has improved tremendously.

Now, many have said that China only improved once the Communist restrictions were lifted, but that is not the full picture. The Cultural Revolution, as horrible as it was, did have a few benefits: it gave a chance to millions of poor farmers and created a generation determined to succeed. My father was born is a very very poor village in one of the poorest provinces in China. He literally lived in a mud hut, his father was a blacksmith, and they sold crops for a living and this was in the 60s/70s. In any nation, he would basically grow up like his father and would never improve in socioeconomic status.

Now, the cultural revolution equaled the educational opportunities between rural and urban areas. My father studied hard and managed to get into one of the best medical schools in the country. He graduated and became a cardiologist. Now, with a more capitalistic kinda society setting in, there is absolutely 100% no chance of that happening. NO CHANCE. I don't care if the child is as smart as Albert Einstein, but the simply fact is that if your family background is that poor, the disparity between rural and urban areas is too large for anyone to cross

As for the Tibet issue, this is what the people feel: Before China went in, Tibet was terribly backwards, even by Chinese standards at that time, which is saying alot. Now, Tibet has improved tremendously, even for the natives there. For gods sake, I've seen monks using cell phones in Tibet. Now, lots of people have been killed in Tibet, but so have millions in rest of China so most people feel that there is nothing special or overly harsh that Tibet has suffered through.

Essentially, most people see Tibet trying to get independence right after it has gained a tremendous amount of benefit from China and tons of investment. Its akin to something like Hawaii wanting independence right now from the US (well, thats not the best comparison there, but still). Hawaii, btw, only joined the United States because the wealthy sugar plantation owners and what not started a Coup to overthrow Hawaii's rightful government.

I can say that for the near future, barring some major change in world politics, Tibet will never be free. If it declares independence, China will surely invade and crush the opposition easily. Now, don't say that the US will help or anything because it won't. Just look at Georgia and Russia right now. Georgia is actually a sovereign nation and all the US is doing is sending in humanitarian supplies....

China and US have too much of a symbiotic relationship for either country to break off relations. US needs China for borrowing money for government debts and for cheap Chinese goods. Without Chinese goods, the US economy will downspiral and crash and there will be another great depression. China needs US consumers to buy Chinese goods and if US stops buying them, the Chinese boom will collapse and there will be a great depression too.

So.... this 862 word reply is finally finished.....and yeah. Kinda a semi rant, but I'm hopefully coherent enough there. Please don't end up making me write another one because this really takes up alot of time....

Another addition here: I feel that the Western mindset is very different from the Chinese mindset. Western nations are outraged bu China's human right violations and I am too up to a point. Keep in mind, though, that to a vast majority of the Chinese, fighting local government corruption is much bigger on their priorities than making sure they have freedom of speech or religion. In fact, those arguing for Tibet and the Xinjiang independence are considered to be on the fringe and radicals in China.
Tl;dr