oops, I accidently erased my post. Sorry.

If it is no trouble and in the archives, please restore it, otherwise I will have to remember what I wrote.

I recently spent several hours talking to a young woman from Shanghai while traveling in Thailand. Her view was that the Chinese people simply don't care to get involved in politics. They feel that the country is generally run well, and while they know that to some degree that opinion is largely based on party propaganda, they also see the standard of living constantly increasing all around them. They do not look at the current incarnations of democracy as something that is enviable or worthy of being emulated. She talked about how our politicians are constantly in the news bickering with each other to no real purpose. By contrast, the perception is that Chinese politicians are getting things done rather than bickering and campaigning, and that generally those things are beneficial to the people.

I have to say that I found her vision of life in China quite compelling. If we are going to have to live with politicians I would prefer at least to not have to hear them "debating" with each other constantly.

That being said, China has a long way to go before it is truly free economically, much less politically. Access to credit is still largely controlled by the state run banks which lend based on political dictates. Capital is highly regulated both in terms of who can invest in what and obviously moving money in and out of the country at fair exchange rates. And most importantly property rights are not clearly secure.

What can be said is that China is clearly becoming more free economically while the US is becoming less.