China’s citizens were willing to forgo political rights when their bank accounts and their country’s international status were swelling, but it’s an open question whether they would do so under harsher conditions. That question is especially pressing with regard to China’s millennials, who have known nothing but upward economic and international mobility. When that cohort was being born in the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping warned that opening the “window” to breathe the “fresh air” of Western commerce would also allow in “flies” in the form of seductive ideas and corrupting influences.
