China's Chicken-and-Egg Problem: What Comes First, Wealth or Freedom?

This article is the third in Foroohar's series on Chinese business developments and their effects on the global economy; read earlier installments here and here. There are many questionable bits of conventional wisdom about China, but one of the most persistent is this: The Middle Kingdom must get rich before it becomes free. The notion is that as China develops into a middle-class nation, it will eventually come to adopt various aspects of Western-style liberal democracy, including better and m...