As a friend who worked out of Hong Kong noted, the Chinese listen to everything you say and hear what they want to hear.

It will take decades, if ever, for things to shift in China toward more real freedom for individuals, because it isn’t part of their culture, and never has been.

If change happens it will be due to the displacements and mixing of various groups, because, even among the Chinese in this country, the emphasis is on their group identity, not their individual identity.

People forget how long it took for Europeans to move to representative democracy and expect everyone else to have the same value system. The world doesn’t work that way. There are an amazing number of Russians who want to return to the Soviet system that didn’t require them to think. Freedom and democracy are hard work if you weren’t born into the system.

China’s leaders are interested in one and only one thing: retaining power. The unspoken deal they’ve made with the Chinese people is, “we’ll give you prosperity in exchange for your freedom.” And the majority of the Chinese people have gone for it.