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> Be careful what you wish for. Toppling a horrible government does not always solve problems. I'm not saying we should just throw the oppressed under the bus t

> Be careful what you wish for. Toppling a horrible government does not always solve problems. I'm not saying we should just throw the oppressed under the bus to get stability, but an actual downfall of CCP would probably be like Saddam Hussein only exponentially worse. I'm not so sure about that. Iraq has an unstable ethnic configuration that the US was in the position to preserve for dubious geopolitical reasons. If it had been allowed to fragment along those lines, toppling Saddam would have probably gone better. China does have some minority ethnic regions, but I doubt anyone would care if they broke away except Han Chinese nationalists. I'd say it's break up would be more like the Soviet Union's, except it would probably go better since the Chinese economy is far more competitive.

praptak 6y ago
You may get a Soviet Union's relatively peaceful breakup if you follow Soviet Union's relatively gradual transition from power. It's not a given, even the Soviets had their 1991 coup attempt. Also, it's not like Soviet Union's breakup didn't leave any problems. Post-breakup Russia has a track record of military conflicts - Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine. Post-breakup Belarus fell back to dictatorship. I don't think we have a reliable recipe for low-harm transitioning away from authoritarian regimes.
refenestrator 6y ago
You might want to check the historical record, there. There have been a bunch of government collapses and insurrections in China over the last few hundred years, featuring an occasional Chinese Jesus (seriously) or sometimes mystical wushu boxers (also seriously). They all killed 10s of millions, some of them close to 100m. It's never 'fine' for the people who live there.