You should go visit China DG... while its still relatively inexpensive. You will be surprised. Most of what our MSM tells us about China is distorted to portray China as badly as possible. China is focused inwards. Most Chinese people know little about outside China. Few know where Canada is. But they can name every province inside China.
The Chinese government wants friendly relations with Canada because we are a source of raw materials and a market for their exports. They don't want any trouble with us. However they don't appreciate us going there and ignorantly and rudely condemning them about their so called human rights problems, especially while we hypocritically don't condemn the human rights abuses of our allies (torture at Gitmo and other Black Ops sites, American and Israeli extrajudicial executions, Israeli ethnic cleansing...)
China has problems. Their criminal justice system isn't that fair and the punishments are on the severe side compared to Canada. But they do make sure everyone has a place to live and food to eat. Poverty is rampant in the country side, but their big cities generate huge amounts of wealth and China has an opulent upper class just like us.
The Chinese government is slowly and cautiously introducing reforms. But they aren't ready for a true democracy yet. China may be officially communist, but at the street level the Chinese are extremely capitalistic. They have regulations and a bureaucracy which attempts to control what people can do. But the reality is far too much is going on for anyone to truly control what happens at the street level. That said, when Obama came to Shanghai, the local communist authorities closed all bars and prohibited sales of alcohol. Anyone caught violating the decree would loose their business license ... if caught.
So China is a weird mix of state control, libertarianism, communism and capitalism... and for the most part it works.
