Given that China was still relatively poor and technologically weak—the joke in the 1990s was that it would take a “million-man swim” for the PLA to reach Taiwan—there was no need to suppress its growth. Given that the American-led global economy was making China wealthier, surely Beijing would come to see the value in supporting that system. And given that so many authoritarian regimes had recently fallen to the global march of democracy, surely China would eventually do likewise. America would transform China—turning it into a “responsible stakeholder” or perhaps even a liberal
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