By Uldis Sprogis:
It started with Nixon in 1972, opening up harmonious diplomatic relations with China, including a reduction of trade restrictions. Then, since President Reagan, the strategy was to integrate China into the liberal international order and, it was to be hoped, instill with economic development a desire for more political freedom.
Instead, China became an aggressive autocracy ruthlessly suppressing dissent, starting in 1989. The rising middle class, which was the theoretical bastion of political freedom, was easily suppressed with the rise of the internet — which the Chinese apparatus used to censor and surveil. China became richer but not freer.
Read more: American Thinker
