Earlier quoted context omitted.
This was the theory during the Clinton administration and, to be blunt, that theory has been wrong. The Chinese people do not see risking growth disruption as worth what the west considers freedom. The west has fundamentally failed to make that case to them and even now western democracy is on the decline. Please, please do not take a free China for granted. Do not think that change — that democracy and freedom — is…
Freedom and democracy aren't inevitable, but occasional revolutions and civil wars are inevitable in China. They've had quite a few and there's a good chance we'll see another one in our lifetimes. The next revolution probably won't produce a liberal democracy.
You may not intend to give this impression, but the sense I get from casual observers of China (I count myself in this group) is that if we just let China do its China thing eventually it will implode and some different state will emerge, probably slightly better. As an American, this seems like The Way of Things because we are taught that freedom triumphs, even if it takes a long time, even if it comes in fits and starts.
It seems that this historical bias has created a blind spot for the possibility that things will continue to get very much worse for the Chinese people — who will go their own way entirely, as a group influenced by a completely different cultural background, with entirely different notions of what good government is.