> You would expect the censoring to be less instead of more as the country develops. This has been the hope of the rest of the world as well -- that economic growth, higher education level and stability would usher in the transition away from autocracy. However, this doesn't seem to be happening and the tech-enabled information control only serves to worsen -- Chinese citizens' knowledge of personal freedom, checks and balances have been stagnating.

Unfortunately, in today's world, fake news is so widespread that it really can lead to the destabilization of nations. Especially with the advent of ubiquitous apps like WeChat, unsubstantiated news generated for the purpose of fomenting outrage can spread unbelievably quickly. In the hands of the poorly educated, things can spiral out of control if you have no means to control it. This has been a growing trend even in highly educated and developed nations (Russia-Trump, Facebook, Brexit, etc). Can you imagine what problems this could cause with a population 5x as large and 1/10 as educated?

WeChat was not even invented 10 years ago and now it is used by almost a billion people daily. As new forms of communication become more widespread, the CCP will develop new ways to control it. Some might characterize this as a worsening of surveillance and state control, but I'm of the opinion that it's a natural evolution in response to evolving methods of communication.

> This had been the hope of the world, Chinese abroad and much of Hong Kong. But the recent actions of CCP, including the Hong Kong extradition law proposal seem to suggest this doesn't seem likely or the time scale might be slow enough that the rise of China may become a threat to the rest of the World first (lack of the rule of law , and the associated forced intellectual theft and transfer, leveraging economic might to bully its neighbors).

> I see the trade-war as the external stimulus that is needed to accelerate China's transition. When the economic growth slows, the party would have to address the social issues. However, years of state-education and nationalistic propaganda is difficult to overcome.

The HK extradition law is a whole other can of worms and would take many posts to dissect. My brief understanding is that the law in itself is not really a threat. The law itself is a pre-cursor to what could be a threat to HK autonomy in the future. Skimming over the legislation, there are many checks and balances in place with the ultimate decision of extradition falling on the hands of an independent judicial review in HK [1]. It's not a broad, sweeping law, but a provision for case-by-case extradition.

As far as transitional time scale goes, it’s a generational change that I think it will be slow but inevitable as more and more Chinese are exposed to democratic, liberal ideology and standards of living improve. American corporations and their lobbyists (who are driving a lot of the trade war rhetoric) think on a very short term, quarter-by-quarter basis. They will not want to wait 5, 10, 20 years for Chinese markets to open up fully to them -if they had their way, they would force China to open up tomorrow, destroying domestic industries that are unable to compete. China would be the world's largest Banana republic.

On the other hand, the CCP is also known for long-term strategic planning (5 year plan, 10 year plan, etc). These two interests are at direct odds with one another. To make matters worse, there are probably elements of the current Politburo who would preserve their iron grip on state owned enterprises forever, if they could. Your point about the trade-war being an external catalyst for reform is a salient one and will likely push the issue to some kind of middle ground.

> You are right. That is the ideal outcome. Hopefully Xi is more Chiang Kai-Shek than Mao.

I hope so too. Thanks for the nuanced discussion :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Offenders_and_Mutual_...