We can't ever know the counterfactual. If these had degenerated into a revolution, there would have been many more casualties.
What we know for sure is that, 30 years later, the country is enjoying tremendous growth, has lifted a lot of its population from poverty, and did that even with foreign powers trying to meddle with it.
Personally, I would consider that a success - especially when compared to say Russia. Sure, things could have been handled better, but Monday quarterbacking is easy, while action is hard.
Populist revolts tend to be very ugly in China, that is true. Like tens of millions of casualties ugly. As terrible as the Communists are, and they are terrible, and have a lot of bloods on their hands, stability in China is not to be discounted, particularly now that they have nuclear weapons. A modern-day Taiping Rebellion or a return to early 20th century warlordism would be a massive catastrophe.
The ends don't justify the means, but justifying the means is socialism 101. Moreover, if they had liberalized both the economy and the social laws, economy would have grown even more.
- if they had liberalized both the economy and the social laws, economy would have grown even more.
And I pointed out (sarcastically, I admit) that the transition to freedom and market economy didn't work out very well in the other example of communist superpower. It might not have anything to do with the transition, per se; it might just be that Russia was culturally unprepared for it and it managed it very badly. But I find easy to believe that a sudden switch from a single party system and an entirely planned economy, to free market and democracy, is in itself extremely risky.
China has been doing great in the years since 1989; Russia, that has tried to follow the path of democracy and market (of course, with very mediocre results), has not.
I didn't choose Russia as an example of economic and social freedom, you did. Russia is not high on the scale of social and economic freedom. In fact Russia has never ever been a democracy in its whole history. You want a better example? Chile.
You're reading in my comment things I didn't actually say. Specifically, I didn't choose Russia as an example of economic or social freedom. I instead argued that Russia tried to go that way, and it didn't end well. And of course, if Russia were an actual example of social and economic freedom, that would go against my whole argument.
They never even tried, though. They may have claimed at some point that they'd do it, but that's a very different matter - they went the "government cronyism" way, and very explicitly so. Again, just compare what Eastern Europe has been achieving, and it's no comparison - even after you account for the fact that Russia did have to face quite a bit of enduring hostility and distrust from Western institutions.
Russia didn't really liberalize or open up socially all that much (I mean, just compare Eastern Europe!). They sold the government assets that they had around as the legacy from their socialist past for pennies on the dollar, ostensibly in order to quickly gather funds for the government and deal with the huge scale of economic disorder/crisis that had forced them away from socialism in the first place.
Their subsequent dysfunction was still the direct outcome of their former socialist system (and, to a significant extent, of overt hostility and distrust from Western institutions - which is a big part of why many people there are in turn distrusting and quite hostile towards Western values even today), not of increased freedom. What limited opening-up they did probably carried them along to where they are now.
Unrelated to the thread, but I find unmotivated disagreement (expressed with downvotes) also poisonous. I think it would be interesting to allow downvotes only in combination with a "downvote comment" expressing the reason of the disagreement.
I'd prefer to live in Switzerland. More economic and social freedom. Neither Russia nor China have too much social or economic freedom so honestly I just think the comparison doesn't make sense. Sure, someone at some point claimed Russia tried liberalism/democracy, but it was a lie, it was never tried. There's less scarcity now that in Soviet times, for sure, but it's still a crony government with no freedom of expression, which is kind of similar to China. However there's way less freedom in China probably.
