China also has a PPP-adjusted per capita income about twice that of India, or it did the last time I looked, which for 95% of the population is a lot more important than civil liberties -- and is actually more important for most of the remaining 5% except in rhetoric.
Somebody: Yeah, speaking of which, it never ceases to amaze me how statistics like this are so selectively used on both the left and right. So, for the left, if China's PPP GDP per capita or life expectancy is increasing - who cares, there's a growing class divide. And on the right, it doesn't really matter that Cuba provides good universal health care and education, because it's a society groaning under the despotic Castro brothers. It's hard to find anyone, aside from public health professionals perhaps, willing to say, yes both capitalist and socialist countries can do a good job providing life's basic essentials.
In dredmond's case, the rubric is a little different - instead of socialism versus capitalism, we have neo-liberalism versus developmental state capitalism.