Chinese snapshot

From the Christian Science Monitor and Economist
(Also, my wife and I have visited, along with some family)

From csmonitor.com
-'"Charter 08' was just signed by a group of intellectuals in China. It predicts upheaval if China fails to adopt the kind of democracy that can channel the rising demands of people who feel officials don't heed them. The Communist Party, however, is still stuck in a post-Mao strategy that it can stay in power as long as it provides the means for people to become rich. For more than two decades, that strategy has survived. But such materialism is a weak bamboo shoot for anyone to lean on, let alone 1.3 billion people. In the Chinese philosophy of Tao, it is the soft things of life that overcome the hardest. The quiet courage of China's thought-leaders in issuing a principled blueprint for change may yet inspire other Chinese to see the hollowness of the party's promises of wealth over the universal promise of freedom."

-"By departing from these [universal] values, the Chinese government's approach to 'modernization' has proven disastrous. It has stripped people of their rights, destroyed their dignity, and corrupted normal human intercourse," states the Charter 08 document."

-"The heart of China's big debate is whether values such as freedom of speech and an independent judiciary are universal to humanity or merely Western."

Economic comparison
From the economist (re: China) and the economist (America)
China's 2008 real gdp growth rate is 9.8%.
America's is 1.8%

Here's the economist link about China's politics.

Personally, I would actually hope China will somehow create conditons of free speech that might even SURPASS America's.

My utopian society would allow anybody to say anything, no matter how crazy, inappropriate, offensive, weird, or creative. Come on, it's just words, right?