PS: reason the US thought that economic liberalisation would lead to political liberalisation, is because of glasnost with USSR.
In glasnost, USSR allowed Iron curtain countries to start travelling to the west, which resulted in them coming back with 'OMFG WE ARE CAVEMEN IN MATERIAL LIFE COMPARED TO THE WEST, WE WANT SAME, MUST HAVE DEMOCRACY'.
***THIS*** was the driving force in killing communism in Europe.
The 'travel to west -----> have your eyes opened about how awesome life is in the west--->go home and demand the same, starting with democracy' pathway is what they expected to recreate for China via economic liberalization.
Ie, Chinese get richer ----> chinese get disposable income ---->Chinese travel to the west--->go home and demand the same, starting with democracy pathway.
Well, it took only 20-25 years, till literally last 5 years or so, for the west to realize that their vaunted pathway termintes at 2nd last step and everything in that flowchart stays same, except the last step becomes 'and chinese when they go back to their home countries after travelling, go back to being politically oppressed and dont give a shit because CONTRARY to the western prediction, Chinese think 'this govt is what is getting us richer so we can travel the world, so lets not fuck with it as long as it doesnt completely bollox up the economy ( and by that i dont mean some housing giant going under or some stock market bubble crash' but getting significantly poorer materially, like the soviets did in the 80s compared to their 60s and 70s life.
The issue is that people don't really understand the average Chinese citizen. It’s deeply ingrained in their folklore, traditions, and culture, passed down for over 5,000 years. From childhood, they’re spoon-fed this idea, passed down from their ancestors, that they are somehow a superior, noble race, descended from the Yellow Emperor and some mythological creature like a lizard or dragon. The average Chinese person is raised to believe that they are part of the “Middle Kingdom,” and that all surrounding countries are lesser, deserving of being vassals. In some ways, they are similar to other supremacist ideologies, like certain extremist groups, but less overtly violent. You can see this mindset in their folklore and cultural emphasis on
lineage, ancestry, race, and bloodline, which are more unchangeable than even religion in their society. The former is deadly in uniting people than religion.
You’ll notice this attitude if you encounter Chinese people in the West, as some of my friends have. Many come across as snobbish, viewing themselves as a
superior race. Of course, you see this among white nationalists too, but they developed that attitude after Western hegemony. In contrast, the Chinese have carried this belief of superiority for over 5,000 years. If you compare this to the Soviets, there's a major difference. The Soviets were united by a newly formed ideology—communism—which the average person couldn’t really relate to on a personal or cultural level. It’s easier to get people to rally behind the idea of being a noble race with a noble lineage than to unite them under an abstract ideology that lacks deep roots in their identity.
Also, keep in mind that the small fraction of English-speaking Chinese you might meet, less than 0.1% of the true mainland population, are often more open-minded. But the average Chinese citizen is very different. I've read some of their wuxia/xianxia novels, and the level of racism in those stories is nauseating, far worse than anything you’d find on extremist online forums like 4chan. 4chancels could even come close to writing puke-worthy scripts compared to average chinese citizen. You can find 100s or if not 1000s of novels in Urban Novels section where there is regular ge*ocide/slavery/rape of other countries set in alterate world. Even after their so-called “century of humiliation,” the Chinese haven’t seen it as a humbling lesson but rather a temporary setback, with their sense of superiority and desire for hegemony intact.
It’s no accident that democracy doesn’t work in mainland China. Taiwan is just a small, whitewashed version of democracy. In comparison, the Soviet Union’s glasnost succeeded to some degree because the people were from diverse cultures, bound together by an artificial ideology. That ideology couldn’t truly unite people, which is why it eventually fell apart. But in China, the deep-rooted sense of racial and cultural superiority makes it much harder for such ideological shifts to take hold.