People in the so-called 'free world' said the same about the ex-Eastern Bloc masses, but it just so happened that ex-socialist countries were never 'totalitarian,' in the sense of leaving _no_ agency to people. What went wrong there was that workers' discontent and militancy were significant enough in a few places to help destabilize the regimes, but workers were not well organized, nor were they independent of 'populist' leaders (dissident intellectuals of various varieties -- some sincerely 'socialist-humanist' [well-meaning, but, alas, politically clueless], some reactionary, others liberal) whose social positions and interests were not the same as workers'. Neither did the workers have their own clear political vision of how to survive the demise of the regimes without capitulating to imperialism & becoming recolonized (in fact, they seemed unaware of the fact that their countries were surrounded by imperial powers ready to exploit any openings).
The Chinese masses do have power, as do all workers of the world -- the power that they don't know that they have. The question is whether they can fight *on the three fronts* at the same time: against free-market technocrats; against liberal & reactionary dissident intellectuals; and against imperial powers. *At this point in history*, of course, they can't. They probably are not aware that that's what it takes to choose a socialist alternative to what exists now. Crucially, as of now, very few Chinese people are even actively trying to find a socialist alternative; a significant minority have already adjusted themselves to capitalist development and are doing well, while a large number of people who are worried about increasing inequality have not decided that they should say no to capitalism (for, indeed, China does have a chance of some capitalist development, unlike most other countries in the periphery). *Nevertheless*, possibilities remain, dormant as they may be -- when we deny the dormant possibilities altogether, we'll be unprepared for a time of change.
Yoshie