> Do you want to argue that China's treatment of Uighur could be relatively better?

No, I wanted someone to actually to actually make arguments and think about the issue, and present some facts. You've done this. People keep asking why I'm not making assertions defending China on these issues. That was never my intention. I stated my intention from the beginning. Perhaps people thought I was being facetious and trying to troll them? I wasn't.

> Ok, how has HK's brutal annexation improved the oppression on the rest of China? This is just another "maybe it's better?" response.

It probably hasn't. Maybe it will have some benefit in the future? The situation hasn't shaken out completely yet. If there's no softening of any policies on China's side for the general populace that comes from this, I would definitely call it an absolute negative outcome. If the normalization of rights of those in Hong Kong to those of an average Chinese citizen (a loss for those of Hong Kong to be sure) results in China allowing some more freedoms though, it's less cut and dry.

FWIW, rule of Hong Kong reverted back to China in 1997, and was not an annexation even then to my knowledge, so that terminology might be incorrect. What we have here is China going back on an agreement it made with the people of Hong Kong at that time regarding their rights.

> The CCP's dystopian restrictions were never necessary or even helpful in allowing Chinese access to the internet/media. You cannot take away something rightfully & naturally theirs then restore it in a lesser state and claim this is a net benefit.

That only makes sense in a system where you already had access. China always censored outside media, such as news, magazines, literature, movies and television. That a large pipe of random data is allowed through only partially vetted is unequivocally more access than the carefully vetted list of items allowed through previously.

To argue otherwise is like arguing that women going from not being allowed to own a business to being allowed to own a business is no gain at if they still didn't have the right to vote. Freedom are not always binary, and even when they are binary, they contribute to a total state that is an amalgamation of different things. Nobody (sane) would argue that we have all the freedoms there are to have in the United States, but I definitely think we're more free than China.

> So, are you going to point out examples of this?

Middle class rise in China[1] has risen to a phenomenal degree, and their middle class spends more than any other nation.[2]

They use Special Economic Zones[3] to experiment with more free economies.

The fact we had a trade war with them recently points towards the fact that there is leverage here, and there, which allows for dialogue in a way that allows for pressure from the rest of world on China, as they are dependent on on the west and the rest of the world to provide the level of comfort their people have become accustomed to through increased economic activity. I don't believe the prior Peesident was effective, or could be effective in this role, for many reasons, so I have hopeful for the near future, even if the relationship is still in a shambles.

> - The CCP began an unprecedented ethnic cleansing and targeted detainment campaign on Uighurs

Yes, bad.

> - They brutally annexed a formerly liberal Hong Kong and removed their freedoms while not borrowing any liberal policies from HK to the rest of the mainland

I don't think this is an accurate assessment of the situation (about half accurate? Seriously, if you're reading sources calling it an annexation, that's odd and you should look into why they are presenting it that way when it's plenty bad enough without that), nor do I think it's over, so I'm not sure it's a point in either direction.

> Xi became president for life and enshrined his name and ideology into the constitution

Sort of tangential. It's not like they went from electing leaders to not. They went from a ruling party that promoted from within based on their own criteria to one person doing the same. I'm not sure there's a measurable difference here WRT what we're talking about.

> Destroyed Jack Ma as a govt critic [4] - one of the most elite members of the affluent, educated, connected class you suggest is being empowered.

I don't think one person is the same as a class of people. But perhaps this will be something pointed to in the future as a point where the middle class took more note.

> - Exporting its censorship by leveraging its newfound economic connections with Hollywood [5]

Let's not look to Hollywood as a bastion of freedom. Regardless of the story they pitch, they've always been about money. This is no different than they've always been with inside interests. No large movie meant to be sold to the masses risks offend large interests or groups that might affect the bottom line too much, and this is the same as it ever was.

> - Expelled foreign journalists

I'm not sure this can be taken as an indicator given current events. A lot (most?) of them were American journalists, which points towards it being more related to ongoing diplomatic relations with the United States which is the cause there (and let's be clear, it's not like the United States wasn't trying to nationalize a Chinese company less than a year ago, so this spat has definitely spilled over into other areas besides foreign policy). It could also be because of increased scrutiny into the origins of COVID-19, which while really not great, I wouldn't classify as meaning quite the same thing.

Those are all really good points, and evidence, so thank you for bringing them to the conversation. That's really all I was trying to do, get people go from believing that something as large and tied to enough variables as what China is going to be like in the future could be stated to be a certain way without evidence to thinking more deeply about it and providing evidence. It might be that China is getting worse right now. I'm not sure I know enough to make that determination (so many of the things we've discussed are deep and require more attention, but at a minimum the Uighur situation does not bode well for the future of China), but I just don't like people being so flippant with something so immense that's about so many people, so decided to stir the pot a bit in an effort to get people to actually define what they thought and look closer at the issues, since I suspect most of us are working off headlines and ledes, and not a very deep understanding of what's actually going on as a whole.

In any case, thanks for participating. I hope some of the stuff you found and presented was new to you (which means you learned something). Some of it was to me, which is always a good thing.

1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/875874/middle-class-popu...

2: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/FP_2020...

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_economic_zones_of_Chin...