The intuition that western liberal democracy is some sort of inevitable wave is very possibly just an artifact of the US winning WWII.
They are huge, filled with uneducated hungry people. Isn't too remarkable when the government's tactic boils down to "kill dissenters & feed the rest".
Only individuals can want something. Societies can't want something; the Earth can't want something; a company or government can't want something.
It's clear that there are individuals in China who do want tolerance. And it's even clearer that there are government officials who are scared of what individuals might start wanting if exposed to ideas of tolerance and democracy.
I'm going to just skip tolerance here, because it's a complex idea not entirely related.
Let's use Democracy. There are definitely some people in China who want Democracy. There are everywhere. It's not remarkable that some people want it, but the numbers are the important part. If 2% of the people want it, then it's never going to happen. If 40% of the people want it, then it might move that way soon. Thing is, while 2% is a tiny minority, it's still objectively a lot of people. 2% can get you a bunch of activist groups and busy-looking protests and that sort of thing. It's much easier than you might think to look at a 2% movement that you personally agree with and believe that it's a mainstream view, the future of the country, etc, when it actually isn't.
Now that's just an example. Personally, I have no idea what the approval rating of Democratic ideas is in China. Tricky thing about totalitarian countries that practice censorship, it's hard to get an idea of what people really think. I'd like to think that it's a mainstream, growing idea. Clearly the Government is indeed afraid of it enough to go out of their way to censor it. But I worry that we may be fooling ourselves, and it has no real traction.
I would also point out that we don't have entirely clean hands either when it comes to tolerating 2%-size political movements advocating for radical changes to the structure of our government and society. Plenty of examples to pick from, no matter what your political persuasion is. I'm not saying we're as bad as them or anything - they're much, much further down that rabbit hole. I'm just saying that it's much easier than you think to ignore and excuse such abuses when they're against something that you don't like.
Some truths really are self-evident.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...
TL; DR: Everyone hates their outgroup, and everybody has one, including you and me. Isn't it rather convenient to convince yourself that everyone in your outgroup is intolerant totalitarians, so that you can continue to hate them and justify any kind of tactics against them while also patting yourself on the back at how tolerant you are? (The 'you' there doesn't mean anyone in particular, just a general statement).
Tolerance means not hating your enemies, your outgroup, and is genuinely hard and pretty rare. Everybody likes their friends and allies, and there's nothing particularly special or virtuous about it.
That's a pretty extreme strawman. I disagree with lots of outgroups, and I only call a couple of them totalitarians.
If someone hates all of the outgroup, they are almost certainly hypocritical and lying to themselves about being tolerant.
If someone hates none of the outgroup, we can agree they're virtuous and special, sure.
If someone hates 15% of the outgroup for specific reasons, that's probably okay. It doesn't automatically imply that they are secretly intolerant. Most people that claim to prioritize tolerance are here, and most of them are telling the truth.
And perhaps that statement was an oversimplification, but as I understand it, that's essentially the point of the Paradox of Tolerance. If you had to sum that up in a sentence or two, how else would you do it?
The paradox of tolerance is not particularly difficult to deal with. You prioritize the preservation of as much tolerance as possible. If someone is trying to reduce the levels of tolerance in the world by a large amount, it's important to fight them, even if it means minor short term intolerance. And even then you tolerate them in all other ways.
Chinese people aren't drones. They don't have a hivemind to tell them what is good for them. Sacrifice for the country might be a thing during Mao's period, but I am not seeing it in nowadays' young generation.
On the contrary, I think Chinese people believe less in the collective good. If the problem isn't your own problem, then it is everyone's problem, then it is no one's problem. That is why in so many situations, government becomes that last resort to figure stuff out.
'The mountains are tall, and the emperor is afar', as the old Chinese sayings goes. The ruthless authoritarianism and primitive freedom co-exist in China's case.
There is pressure to conform, but only because not doing so, there will be pain. 'The bird who extends out its head most gets shot first', as they always say.
Confucianism might be what the world, even China itself thinks about itself, how it is ruled upon. But Fajia (Legalism) is what actually gets executed in real life.
In particular, getting there would arguably involve considerable chaos. And so it's not that hard for those in control to play on people's fears about that. After all, Westerners have tried to impose democracy on China before, and it didn't work out very well.
Back in the 60s, China was on track to be North Korea times 10^4 to 10^6. But Kissinger managed to convince Nixon to intervene in a constructive and noninvasive way. That clearly has worked, so what we need is arguably to stay on that track.
On the other hand, isolating South Africa arguably did hasten the end of Apartheid. And if China undertakes full-on genocide against the Uyghurs, that may be the only moral path. But orders of magnitude more dangerous. And when we add global climate change to the mix, it'll be insane.
I suppose that you could claim Germany or Japan as long-term successes. But the costs were immense.
I did not read anything of the sort in that response. It stated that respondent disagreed with your conclusion and explained why. Are you conflating a difference of opinion with suppression of free expression? That does not seem a healthy attitude to have.