Gee, somebody should teach the Communist Party of China about the self-destructive potential of inherent contradictions in economic systems. I think there was this German guy they could read up on . . .
Authoritarian regimes are rarely known for their keen senses of irony.
To the OP: there’s a pretty definitive response to another country trying to embarrass your regime out of existence. It’s called “war”. If your regime will cease to exist if it does nothing and is capable of fighting (and thus possibly surviving), it’s no risk and all gain — really, not a hard choice. The US government might succeed at undermining the legitimacy of the PRC’s government, but loss of face is the absolute worst, most risky possible way.
Considering the censorship and state control of information still prevalent in China, if there was some satellite-based method of doing so, could the provision of free country-wide, unblockable Wi-Fi for all citizens* to tap into, allowing them to chat, connect and post blogs etc… whilst learning of the outside world and allowing new ideas. It could even possibly be sold as a humanitarian project, treating the Internet access as a concept that falls within the bracket of a ‘basic human right’ in our modern world. It would also create a flood of porn lovers, just as suggested up-thread, petty hackers, mouthy gamers and terrible teenage poetry, but still… a price worth paying. 
Education, communication, understanding and free sharing of ideas could prove to be a massive catalyst for change from within, allowing the dissemination of values and possibly a grassroots uprising for the right to be heard, to be represented, and no longer be disenfranchised politically.
Perhaps this would be best tested out over North Korea firstly, see how it pans out…?
- Not got the slightest clue how this could work…
Aside from the politics and human rights, which are important issues, I see capitalism flourashing on totalitarian regime soil. Instead of responding to that situation as a threat, why not focus more on why that came to be?
You want the other to look bad? Why? So you don’t have to look at yourself? I don’t get it.
Apprently Vietnam is making inroads? It’s slow going and there’s a definite upper-limit, but according to Forbes, the really low-skill stuff is starting to move south. Cite: Outsourcing To Vietnam
Anyway, the next stop is probably Ethiopia or something. Of course, this will be Chinese-directed since they’re doing so much in Africa already and have solid relationships with many of the governments there.
Yikes - when China is outsourcing its labour to cheap locations you know the world is different!
Well, assuming a Chinese Spring comes on some other way – e.g., economic collapse, or drastic loss of government credibility for purely domestic reasons, or a replay of Tienanmen Square where the government blinks first and starts offering concessions, or some combination of these – could it come off peacefully?
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Gee, somebody should teach the Communist Party of China about the self-destructive potential of inherent contradictions in economic systems. I think there was this German guy they could read up on . . .
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Possibly your German expert is one of the main reason that Communist economics theory is so fucked up in the first place? 
They might have been better off listening to GROUCHO Marx instead…
-XT
I would willingly donate your money to this project, but, we do get PRC porn in exchange, right? Just wondering what it’s like, and whether the most visible influences are traditional opera/drama, historical reconstructionism, socialist realism, or reverse cowgirl.
Still, it’s not quite an unsustainable model, is it? I mean, it is possible for an industrializing country with cheap labor to evolve into a middle-class-consumer economy, that in fact has happened here and almost everywhere industrialization has happened. Even Russia, pretty much or soon. China’s just a bit behind the curve because it started as this massive peasant society. But does that mean they can’t achieve an American standard of living the way we did – i.e., by producing primarily for domestic consumption? The bigger the country, the better that should work, right? Demand is endless.
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Still, it’s not quite an unsustainable model, is it?
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But it IS unsustainable the way China is attempting to do it.
But we don’t bank everything on ever increasing standards of living AND being able to make the cheapest products. That’s why the US (and much of Europe) don’t make cheap stuff anymore…our labor costs have risen and basically cut us out of those markets. We specialize in more value added goods and services now.
Right…and that’s why they can do what they have done in the last few years. It’s easy to do, with the right level of effort, if you start pretty much at the bottom. However, you can’t sustain that indefinitely. Eventually your labor costs WILL rise, and eventually other nations WILL expect your currency to rise to a level that reflects reality. When that happens you aren’t going to be able to have such unfavorable trade imbalances. And if you RELY on those imbalances to stoke perpetual growth you are going to hit some walls eventually. And if you RELY on NOT hitting those walls to keep your population happy with your other, less savory totalitarian type practices, then that’s going to be an issue…no?
Um, no. And certainly not with China, who has banked everything on their current model in order to keep swimming against the current. They aren’t going to just fall into a Western European/American/Japanese/The West type model AND MAINTAIN THEIR CURRENT POLITICAL SYSTEM. It’s not going to happen. Not in the long run.
-XT
So, again – can that political system be ended peacefully? (Civil war in China being a very bloody prospect always.)
Maybe? Maybe not? I don’t know. There are political scientists who study why government transitions are peaceful or not, but it’s miles beyond my expertise. That said, I can speculate anyway. 
As best I remember, there are two key parts to a peaceful transition. First, the protesters have to coordinate themselves sufficiently to stay strong but stay peaceful. If they start getting too rowdy, the game ends there. Second, either the government has to lack the will to use violence (probably not the case in China) or the army has to almost unanimously refuse orders to fire on their fellow citizens. A country as large and varied as China makes both those things more difficult: the protesters have a hard time coordinating, since there are so many of them, while the government should always be able to find enough soldiers (presumably from elsewhere in the country) to shoot at the protesters. Were I a betting person, I would bet that China will gradually liberalize. The second most likely alternative is civil war, and I think a peaceful but sudden transition is far and above the least likely alternative. YMMV, though.