# Do you want China to prosper or fail? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 27, 2012, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-want-china-to-prosper-or-fail/610830 "2012-01-27T04:53:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![ch4rl3s](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c4cdca/32.png) [@ch4rl3s](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ch4rl3s)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2012, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-want-china-to-prosper-or-fail/610830/81 "2012-02-09T13:18:02Z")
> [@China\_Guy](#): > > [hijack]Based on my experience, 1 in 17 cannot possibly be anywhere close to reality… If they were not advertising for fear of reprisals, you wouldn’t notice 1 in 17. > [@China\_Guy](#): > > …Keep in mind that there are probably a lot of different groups categorized as Christian, … Oh, absolutely. I saw a program, (trying to remember if it was the same one,) that mentioned the different variations, some more like new age spiritualism. > [@China\_Guy](#): > > …when in reality they would bear nothing more than a superficial resemblance to anything you might consider Christian. There’s a long history of that. Go back and look at the Taiping Rebellion – led by a Hakka Prophet named Hong Xiuquan, a Christian convert who had claimed that he was the brother of Jesus Christ. > [/hijack] All of that was mentioned in the program I saw, too. That last one was quite an interesting character. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2012, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-want-china-to-prosper-or-fail/610830/82 "2012-02-09T22:36:14Z")
> [@ch4rl3s](#): > > If they were not advertising for fear of reprisals, you wouldn’t notice 1 in 17. Your basic Christian that does nothing to challenge the government and isn’t part of an in your face “underground” church doesn’t realistically have a fear of reprisals. My mother in law certainly would be a case in point and would never have been an obnoxiously public Christian for that year if she had been in fear. And that’s someone who’s family had had bad experiences in the cultural revolution and through the 1980’s. Some people put being a Christian on their resume (not many so it really stood out when I read them). The China of 2012 is a lot different from 1989 and Tiananmen, and the totalitarian all encompassing police state down to the neighborhood watch has been largely dismantled. Capitalism is great. Since the government no longer assigns your job, where you live, access to restricted goods like a bicycle, etc, then the government has also given up the old style control. Make no mistake that there is still an apparatus but it’s a pale shell of it’s former self. ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2012, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-want-china-to-prosper-or-fail/610830/83 "2012-02-09T23:10:30Z")
Isn’t there still a Chinese Pope though? And is it true he knows kung fu? ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2012, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-want-china-to-prosper-or-fail/610830/84 "2012-02-11T01:47:51Z")
> [@China\_Guy](#): > > Can’t say as I agree with those points and many other laid out in your Wiki link. > > \*This \*wiki article reasonably lays out the \*competing \*claims of the Tibetans and the Chinese. [Serfdom in Tibet controversy - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom_in_Tibet_controversy) > > You might want to check out some books by some people that were actually there at the time. > > 1. Charles Bell, Tibet Past and Present. Free link here: [http://e-asia.uoregon.edu/node/1166](http://e-asia.uoregon.edu/node/1166) > 2. Hugh Richardson with David Snellgrove. A Cultural History of Tibet. > who were actually stationed in Lhasa during the 1900’s and had first hand knowledge. > 3. Heinrich Harrier and 7 Years in Tibet is another source from someone that was actually there. > 4. Robert Ford, Captured in Tibet. Radio operator working for the Tibetan government who was captured in Chamdo during the Chinese invasion and held as a prisoner for 5 years. > > If you actually read any of the above, I can point you to plenty more first person accounts in the late 1800’s and up until the Chinese invasion. > > I travelled fairly extensively in Tibet in the 1980s. Let’s just say that the Tibetans I spoke with (in Mandarin) certainly thought that the pre-1950 period was much preferrable to the post-1950 period. Thank you for the links. I’ll look into them. BTW how much of China have you been around? Perhaps you should start a “Ask a …” thread on that/ 🙂 > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > You’d think the rise of such a foreign doctrine as **Communism** in China would have been a sign of its Westernization if anything would. Like Buddhism and other foreign doctrines China has accepted over the centuries, Communism is increasingly taking on a Chinese form-there’s lots of praise for Confucius nowadayus for example/ ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2012, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-want-china-to-prosper-or-fail/610830/85 "2012-02-11T18:04:08Z")
Chinese Communism has always been Chinese in nature. The concept of a “peasant revolution” doesn’t even make sense in a Marxist light. Communism is a gritty post-industrialist dream, and it was supposed to be the next step after capitalism had done its work building industrial infrastructure. A bunch of rural farmers marching to power while avoiding the cities is a different kind of revolution than anything Marx envisioned. Here is a good article about [popular myths](http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01/02/5_myths_about_the_chinese_communist_party) of about the Chinese Communist Party. In short, it is Communist, and it’s not going anywhere any time soon. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2012, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-want-china-to-prosper-or-fail/610830/86 "2012-03-30T03:54:23Z")
[Gordon Chang,](http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/12/29/the_coming_collapse_of_china_2012_edition?page=full) who previously predicted the fall of the Chinese Communist Party by 2011, now says it **will** fall in 2012. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-want-china-to-prosper-or-fail/610830.md?page=4)