China Tortures People?

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Now, I don't mean to be asinine, but come on...is there anyone out there who's honestly surprised to find out that China continues to torture people? It's like all those Falun Gong/Dafa people who are somehow lining the streets of New York these days (I mean, if China's really THAT bad, how the hell did they get out? You can't exactly innertube across the Pacific), and they're all handing out flyers and stuff about how horrible China is and I just want to say to them, "Really? It sucks living in China? You have no freedom? NO SHIT." But then I don't because karma is a bitch. Um, so instead I type it out in my blog. Well, maybe that's not so bad.

China is not a democracy, and I don't know that it ever will be a democracy; much like the current situation in Iraq, it takes a lot more than "free" elections to create a democracy, whether it's a democratic republic or a parliamentary democracy (which, I believe, are the two more precise definitions of "democracies" currently existing in the world). Certainly in our lifetimes, China isn't going to change all that much, because the people in power have a lot riding on it not changing. From the situations with Tibet and Taiwan to the growing income gap between the new ultra-rich and the continually poor rural masses (sounding like a Marxist here), the powerful in China have never shown even the slightest care for typical liberal democratic niceties, and I don't see any reason to believe one day they'll wake up and suddenly will. It's true that in American politics, some of the biggest reformers (Teddy Roosevelt, FDR) came from monied backgrounds, but here they had a system where they could appeal to the public and couldn't be shoved aside. In China, I'm thinking if you rub the wrong people the wrong way there's still a pretty good chance you can end up in prison, no matter high up you are.