crdb: are you my separated-at-birth twin? I've been looking for you all my life. These are my thoughts exactly, down to my favorite Dickensian analogy. Everyb

crdb: are you my separated-at-birth twin? I've been looking for you all my life. These are my thoughts exactly, down to my favorite Dickensian analogy. Everybody's favorite pastime, pointing fingers on China on everything from "freedoms" to the environment, is really more of a reflection on the commentators' astonishing lack of historical perspective. There's no shortage of fifty-year-olds around China today (say, about a population of Sweden's worth) that will tell you how they were plucked out of the university and sent to work the fields for years during the Cultural Revolution, and point out the exact level -- somewhere between knee- and waist-deep in shit -- that the country was at prior to Deng Xiaoping. I'm sure anybody that witnessed the change from then to now would have a richer and more nuanced opinion on China's government.