What to talk of a free media, China has even built a Great Wall over the Internet. A country which does not permit political dissent how would it provide dissent in public.

The country may have made great strides in various fields, economics, military power, science etc. etc. but chaining people to an ideology that subjugates rather than permits freedoms is not growth.

Winds of change will only come about as individual incomes grow. The authority of the state will only be challenged, then. Poverty lets governing authorities encroach upon individual liberties. The rising middle class of China will atleast overturn the ‘one child policy’ of the country.