Justin wrote...

I haven't lived in China, but my impression of the country leads me to believe otherwise. If it's not *quite* socialist, it's fascist.

As above, this doesn't seem right. Hong Kong might be a major capitalist center of operations, but Hong Kong is not really China, socioeconomically speaking.

Mainland China is already a capitalist giant. It's also arguably fascist, at least from an American's point of view. But if you don't f*ck with politicians, you can cut almost whatever deal you want. Start criticisizng Zhong Non Hai and your eyeballs will end up giving sight to some aging businessman or party bigshot (which basically means an aging businessman these days).

A majority screwing up a country is not "letting them figure things out on their own". Maybe we should have let the Japanese figure things out by themselves once they surrendered? Germany? No funds to rebuild France. Oh, I want to live in *that* world, where we may not have won the cold war.

Well, there's a difference here. It's one thing to rebuild a country after we've gone to war with them, but messing with a country's internal politics and destabilising their local governments is a different story. And indeed, none of the countries where we've performed such duties (with our help from our friends in the SOAs) currently have a particularly stable economy, though Argentina is finally showing some dim hope. -TD _________________________________________________________________ Getting married? Find great tips, tools and the latest trends at MSN Life Events. http://lifeevents.msn.com/category.aspx?cid=married