> Of course, they didn't liberalize History is always easy to predict in hindsight. Even after Tiananmen Square in 1989, things could have turned around. Imag

> Of course, they didn't liberalize History is always easy to predict in hindsight. Even after Tiananmen Square in 1989, things could have turned around. Imagine what would have happened if someone would have stood up to the regime and turned it into a democracy. We would now have been talking about how clever George H.W. Bush had been in lifting them out of poverty etc etc. Also, the Soviet Union was the biggest threat still on that point. It fell only in the early 1990s. So what was so bad about giving China some space as a counterweight to the Soviet Union? Their relations where pretty bad since the Sino-Soviet split on the 1960. Only in 1989 was there a first summit again between China and the Soviet Union. > China's using its massive industrial base that Americans funded to increase its capabilities for a showdown with the US Probably better to talk about "The West" since many Western nations have imported goods and services from China and will potentially end up in a conflict.