Che Guevara T-shirts

You'd take China? As in, the China that kills dissenters? At least Castro only imprisons them. Not to mention that China doesn't even have the plus side of a decent welfare system.

 

There's nothing luxurious about Cuba's "welfare". It is basic care, its not going to make me want to live there.

The plus side of China is that it is a booming economy with a big private sector that provides opportunities for many people. In Cuba there is no opportunity, no hope at all.

I don't know if China is going to be democratic anytime soon. But it is developing, it is going somewhere. It is changing a lot - it wasn't that long ago that they were suffering the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Cuba isn't changing, it is completely stagnant.

So I'd choose China.

 

I'd say that the protests in Tibet kinda prove that it has no intention of changing any time soon, not to mention the fact that if any TV station mentions the protests, or anything that the general populace shouldn't know about, then they black them out.

Cuba's got a better welfare system than the U.S for starters, I'm not saying I'd happily up and move there out of choice. But if I happened to have to have been born in a totalitarian state, I'd have chosen that one.

 

I don't think events in Tibet prove anything about where China is going. I'm taking a longer term view: look at China from 1950-1970, and look where it is now. Its a pretty radical change. I don't see any democracy, but I do see increasing prosperity and increasing openness. Maybe it will never be properly democratic, it might turn out like Singapore, but I do expect it to become an increasingly open society.

Cuba? I'm not spending my life working for a monthly bean quota. Nothing has changed there in 50 years, they are stuck in a time warp. Always believing that communism, which has failed them for five decades, will somehow start working.

In fact I did live in China for a year, if Hong Kong counts.