Quote from BlueHorseshoe:
When you are starving this very instant, drinking contaminated water and with no economic prospect ... you don't have the luxury of thinking '20-50 years down the line.'
And the government can't afford to wait 20-50 years when the country is awash in riotous chaos.
My in-laws lived through the rioting in Indonesia when Suharto was overthrown during the Asian financial crisis. (Remember that one?) Mother-in-law took a brick through her rear windshield. Wasn't so long ago ...
They escaped China just as the Great Cultural Revolution was getting underway. Listen to the people in Guangdong province tell of watching hundreds of bodies floating down the Pearl River and its many tributaries. Nobody fished them out for fear of being accused of sympathizing with 'criminals.' It is still in living memory, and that same restlessness still simmers below the surface ...