I would respect the proponents of engagement with China in the past more if they said 'It could have worked, but it failed, and we need to look at why' than when they push this 'actually it was never about the things we said it was about at the time' line.
especially if it's 'oh, all those speeches about how it would liberalize China, actually those were for the rubes, we had a very sophisticated understanding that we talked about behind closed doors, honest'
I think one of the things that's hardest for people to accept is that in many ways engagement with the world *did* liberalize Chinese attitudes - and then the Party put a hard choke on it as it reasserted its power.
You can follow @BeijingPalmer.
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