Originally Posted by exerda
Having had a romantic relationship with a citizen of the PRC and worked with many from both China and "their" territory Taiwan, I doubt it's accurate to say that the Chinese, as a whole, are "happy" with how things are in their country. The ones who are "happy" by and large are either what most of us would term brainwashed or are amongst the privileged, such as children of military officers, doctors, politicians, etc.
I can only say that I disagree. My wife is Chiense, we have many Chinese friends, both here in the US and in China. The minorities of western China, who live in an agrarian economy and are extremely poor, are, no doubt unhappy, but with their poverty and circumstances, not with the ideology of their government. I say this with the greatest of respect, but I'd submit that your use of quotes around the word "their" in connection Taiwan suggests, perhaps, a bit of a bias.
China is unique in that they have maintained a wholly totalitarian communist government but have moved more and more toward a capitalist economy. Ecomonic necessities have forced this upon them. The elections in China still consist of the same sort Saddam Hussein used to run: i.e. one candidate, or at best one party, on the ballots.
China is only nominally Communist. At present, it's a totalitarian oligarchy, but it's economy most definitely is not Communist. As for elections, at the local levels, people choose their politicians, and not from a single candidate. There aren't parties in the western sense, true, but I am unconvinced that no parties (or one party) is substantially different than having only two parties -- how much choice do you think we really had in the last few elections? Parliamentary democracies offer, at least, a range of choices.
Nonetheless, my point in all of this is that we are hardly in a position to dictate to China what it most do with respect to its government and its people.