You're right, if I ask the most oppressed people in a society, they will tell me everything wrong with the government. I'm sure that's no different anywhere else.

My question is: what do you do about these problems? How do you curb local political corruption? How do you maintain governance of a mostly uneducated mass, while transitioning to capitalism? How do you keep the country developing while minimizing pollution? etc etc etc...throwing stones is the easy part. Building is the hard part.

My entire point is: you won't be able to come up with good, sound solutions to any of these problems without a deep understanding of China, and even then, I doubt there are any really great solutions without side effects.

Edit: but to reply, a lot has changed since Tiananmen. I don't have to ask the Mothers of those killed, I can see it myself. Maybe it hasn't changed as much as you like, but it has changed a lot.