@Johnthorpe

Those are some pretty harsh criticisms of the Chinese government.

First off, while I will say that they certainly aren't a wonderful model for any country to use, there are a lot of problems, you have to consider who and what has to be governed.

Population of U.S. = about 300 million with illegals.
Population of China = Almost 1.3 billion. (thats 1 billion more then U.S. - lets see the U.S. maintain a stable regime of that many people using their current methods)

Then we can talk about human rights, which is generally the crux of the argument for the Chinese government being some horrible monster.

Who are you comparing them too? If we're choosing the U.S. it also has a long list of human rights violations. From Guantanamo Bay to participation in international tribunals for punishing war crimes... Why should China live up to these ideals of human rights when the U.S. doesn't?

They have started democratizing the lower levels of government in China - and international observers have found the elections to be poorly run, NOT because of official tampering but because in many places the populace just doesn't know how an election should be run, the participants can be as much to blame as the organizers.

Admittedly all the uproar over the Japanese rape of Nanjing and so on seems more to do with diverting public unrest away from pressing domestic, economic and political issues in the national arena.

The main point is that many parallels can be drawn between actions taken by so-called "advanced western nations" - particularly the U.S. - and the various apparently indefensible actions of the P.R.C. Besides, since joining WTO they have become much more transparent and accountable. (also use of death penalty isn't _that_ much higher then the U.S. when looked at from a per capita POV)