Views that have not been discredited at all by apologists like you.
Here's a clue. Tianenmen Square: Actual history. Your fabulous free China: Myth.
Chiang Kai-Shek may not have been a saint, he may have been a tyrant, and the U.S. under Dubya Bush may be a tyrannical cesspool, but how does that justify Mao's red nightmare? It doesn't.
China may be better than it was, but it has a long way to go to be truly great again.
I don't really consider myself an apologist - I consider myself a scholar. When you give a reasoned look at China's behavior recently and have studied the events of Tianenmen square within the context of the leadership of China during that period, it makes sense. I am in no way saying that China is "fabulously" free, and I'm not saying that the Tianenmen square event of almost two decades ago was nothing to be concerned over. I'm saying that a serious look at China's CURRENT behavior reveals that it's not nearly the tyrannical juggernaut you've made it out to be. I'm also a little tired of people assuming that everything Mao did was negative. The Great Leap Forward was a complete disaster, but it was accidental. People treat it as though Mao was deliberately starving out peasants, and this is how he gets treated as a "butcher of millions" by counting these deaths against him. Because that's exactly what I'd do as a dictator - systematically murder my power base so that I have little refuge against the party bureaucrats I'm constantly struggling against
. Feel free to criticize Mao for the Hundred Flowers debacle or the Cultural Revolution - he deserves that criticism. But he was never as bad as Stalin or Hitler, and modern-day CCP rulers are distancing themselves in deed, if not in word, from Mao as fast as they can. If you don't believe me, try studying this for 6 years and then come back and tell me I'm wrong - then we'll have the same amount of applied studies on each side
. As it stands, Roxlimn seems to be the only other studied China individual in this thread and he and I agree with one another on most things. I'll take you more seriously when you stop spouting hysterical US talking points that have little backing in reasoned analysis. We aren't defending the CCP - hell, I personally would love for China to enjoy a fully representative government - but we recognize that no amount of wishing will magically create our ideal government. As it is, the current government of China meets the basic needs of many of its citizens without a large degree of persecution, which is much better than we can say for most governments (including US "allies" like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia).
I still stand by my earlier statement. China has had many regime and dynasty changes, drastic ones. To say that China has been a nation for thousands of years, is to say that Peru has been a nation for thousands of years because the Incans were there thousands of years ago. Chinese culture and history have been used as propaganda tools by the current regime. Can you name one cultural achievement "China" has made since 1949? You probably can't, unless you count attempted purges of old chinese ways and culture, but can you really?
A nation is a nation if it says it is - it's as simple as that. I think you're confusing "state" with "nation." The Greek nation is thousands of years old but the current Greek state not very old at all. The fact is that despite many incursions from outside groups, the Chinese culture and nationhood has remained intact and culturally absorbed neighbors and invaders for millenia. How this doesn't qualify them as an ancient nation is beyond me. Just because they're modernizing doesn't mean they're no longer a nation. I suppose when England gave up feudalism that it just ceased being England? Should we command all those Chinese people to stop leading successful lives and go back to pulling rikshaws for Americans visiting Shanghai? Maybe they could all wear coolie hats again for our amusement while binding their childrens' feet? Seriously, I don't think you have any idea as to what you're talking about.
Since 1949, the Chinese have been improving their infrastructure (except during the Cultural Revolution, when they were destroying it), improving women's rights, attempting to modernize the countryside (and failing after Mao's death), improving the legal system, slowly granting voting rights, if only at the village level, and developing into a modern nation. Most states that piece themselves together take a while to do so, and the US was no exception either. I don't suppose you thought that immediately after the revolution the US began competing with Britain for world dominance, did you?
Anyway, my money is on India. I think India will become a superpower in the near future.
Poor choice, I'd say. India is one of those countries that hopeful people believe will rise up to fill China's place as a natural super-power. The problem is that India has crippling problems with its lower-class citizens, and due to a long history of imperial domination by Britain and its own intrinsic caste system, it does little to help them. China is teaming with many literate citizens who are capable of skilled labor, while a much lower % of India is capable of the same. While it is true that the middle-upper classes of India likely have more immediate financial potential than the same classes in China, the neglected lower classes will be the crucial stumbling block. China certainly has its own problems with its lower classes (the migratory labor market in China is huge) but the difference in basic potential between the literate but down-on-his-luck peasant vs. the illiterate and desperate street urchin/untouchable are huge when it comes to a modernizing state. Further, China's One Child policy, while occasionally implemented barbarically, leaves China a lot of room to improve in quality of living, which is a great asset to a growing state. India, on the other hand, has no such policy and a great cultural emphasis on many children, and so success is being buried under the sheer number of children produced in India, thinning out financial gains and increasing the danger posed by the dauntingly large number of lower-class citizens within India.
It's not too late to put your money back on China, you know
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lol:,) or it might even be India that replaces us. As for America being dissolved, or completly destroyed... That's a long way off. There would have to be drastic changes on a global scale for a nation like mine or England, to fall. Civil war isn't likely, a larger war isn't likely, nuclear exchange could happen but its not likely. 
