Things do change over the time. And if you are so willing to look back I am sure you'll find enough trash in a history of your own country.
It’s why and how things change that is interesting. In China things have changed because Xi and the Chinese communist party have chosen to change them in particular ways. It’s these choices and the consequences of them that we are discussing.
But Xi seems to care about Xi.
Instead Jiang / Hu had their own agendas including moving vast amounts of capital outside and also for themselves e.g. some of the largest VCs there. Some of Xi's policies e.g. restricting movement of capital has to do with this.
I think people like that are the reasons why the world isn't at peace. China could've become the next japan. They could've probably overtaken the US that way too. But now, they've "alerted" the eagle, and the US will never let china become a superpower.
It already is. To the less degree than the US for now. Could go either way in the future. But if you think that the US could go on forever dictating what other countries allowed to do I think you are wrong.
That was a decision that never should have been taken, due to the terrible risk of how things would turn out if it failed, as it did. This was possibly the most disastrous strategic blunder in America’s history. Like yanking defeat from the jaws of victory in the Cold War.
Maybe eventually it will, would just take long time. There are always ups and downs.
The core belief of the communist party is will to power - getting and keeping power by any means necessary. There is no balance of power, separation of powers, checks and balances, independent court system, separation of military from political party, constitutional review or law, individual human rights, etc. Hence the term totalitarian - total control of people’s behavior, speech, and even thought.
All of communist ideology is an elaborate justification and sophisticated plan for getting and keeping absolute and unrestricted power. It is too deeply ingrained, too sticky so to speak, in communist party psyche and identity. Unlike SK and Taiwan it was never going to liberalize and discard itself in favor of democracy, an ideology directly counter to its core beliefs.
So east Germany, Germany and Italy (fascism), the Baltics, Czech, Slovakia, Moldova, Georgia (where Stalin came from), Romania (ciaucescu) etc. Have no hope of ever being democratic?
If we could go back in time and not economically prop up communism in China, and let it collapse the same as the Soviet Union, then I would anticipate a similar outcome there too. But you have to let communism collapse and become totally discredited in order to achieve that outcome.
There’s very little evidence that Leninism and its derivatives are any stickier than any other authoritarian system, and essentially all authoritarianism (and most non-authoritarian systems of government, too) appeals to some ideology for its justification (often local nationalism), so your attempt to divide the world of dictatorships into ideological and non-ideological dictatorships is flawed from the start.
> All of communist ideology is an elaborate justification and sophisticated plan for getting and keeping absolute and unrestricted power.
It’s…not. In fact, the part of Leninism that serves that purpose (vanguardism) is its key departure from Marxism, and notionally an adaptation of Marxist Communism to bypass the need for capitalist development as a prerequisite to the socialist stage.
And I don't consider nationalism an ideology, since it's never as philosophically developed as say communism or US liberal democracy. It's just a useful, easy, naturally occurring fallback for dictators looking for way to rally their population against the "other".
And you can argue till the cows come home about what Leninsim, Marxism, and Maoism are supposed to be, but what they actually become in reality is clear. Totalitarian.
Eh, it could have worked. Not that hu jiantao is a saint or anything but it's pretty clear that he was unhappy with the direction that china is going down and blindsided by what xi has unexpectedly turned in to.