Let's say you're the Chinese government (or a person in the government) and care deeply about the future of China. What's your main concern? Is it not the prevention of destabilizing civic unrest like that we've seen in Tunisia, Syria, Egypt, Ukraine, and for that matter, China? That's the worst possible thing that could happen to the country, and it's quite far from unlikely, and I'd want to do whatever I can to prevent it.
Then you should probably do same things that successful countries do. Ones that did not have devastating civic unrest. From Australia to Austria.
What do they do? What's holding them afloat? Hint: it's the remnaints of democracy and civil society, not special services looking for destabilizing factors day and night.
Special services don't hurt, but everyone relying on just them had bitter end. Treating your citizens like criminals didn't help.
I assure you that Syria and Libya had extensive systems to counter insurgents, and it led them straight nowhere. As it was for DDR and USSR.
To offer a cynical perspective from a formerly colonized country, it seems to me that what made Australia, the UK, the US, Canada etc. successful is blatant disregard for human rights and equality when they were going through the same phase that China is going through now.
To take the US as an example, the Europeans just came to North America, pretty much killed or made life miserable for the native americans, stole all their land, brought in a bunch of slaves as free labour, prevented what the chinese might call "disharmony" by making sure non-white people couldn't immigrate until as recently as 1960, gave little or no regard for nature and the enivornment and so on. Equality and human rights were really bolted on as an afterthought well after development was achieved.
When it comes to the environment, you're accusing based on things that were not well understood in 1870-1910 when the US went through its industrial revolution.
The health effect correlation with specific chemicals was extremely poorly understood when the US went through its industrial revolution. The progress of chemical and biological sciences were still in the first inning.
The understanding of how certain chemicals can pollute or destroy the environment, and specifically what that means for long-term health, were hardly understood at all. I would argue 1% of what is known today about the environment, was known in 1900. One need not look any further than the medical therapies that were being attempted in the late 1800s to understand how backwards and ignorant the various scientific fields were.
The same cannot be said of the last 30 years when it comes to China. Their behavior is one of destruction with near complete disregard for the vast information that we now have.
Not really. Have you heard of lead paint and gasoline ?
The Ancient Greeks knew lead was poisonous - didn't stop american companies from using it since it improved profit.
This is startlingly true. For example most of Africa or the Middle East is going through very blood struggles that the western world only got through 70 years ago. Some places are at the French Revolution stage, others at the Glorious Revolution stage, others still stuck in a Weimar Republic or even Nazi regime phase.
Prosperity seems to be a prerequisite for solid democracy. And unfortunately it does not ensure it :(
