Chinese Economic demise..Wishful US Thinking?, page-62

The Liberal Democracies which Middle Class
people enjoy are a recent invention and even at that
they are by far in the minority globally.

While no doubt many on this thread (including me)
will agree with you but that is certainly a global
minority view.

Capitalism as we know it (post Industrial Revolution 1)
has had nearly 250 years to sort out poverty but unfortunately
that hasn't happened...the only prospect of that is in countries with
a high degree of Socialism such as Nordic Countries.

I'm keenly aware that there is a significant RW/Populist/Libertarian/working
class element in western democracies who see the injustices as being
due to the greedy elite and not the system per se.

For those in the USA, the American Dream is alive and well even
though to a realist, the chances of 'rags to riches" is just as about
that of winning Lotto but a Yeats once said, to them its
"thread softly or you'll thread on my dreams"

While a society may be only as good as to how it treats its young and old,
an economic system , IMO, is only as good as to how it treats poverty.

You mention HK:

Hong Kong owed its prosperity in being the Capitalist gateway
to Communist China up to the late 1990s and then it became
an integral part of China with an agreed 50 year window to fully integrate.

Around half way through this planned transition, there was internal
resistence to the orderly transition ; hence the mini-social media
led demonstrations . While as middle class westerners endocternated
with western capitalism, this Chinese 'intrusion" on Hong Kong "westerners"
is considered unjust, but IMO from the point of view of the majority
of Chinese who are working class, then this forced integration is,
more likely than not , acceptable and right.

The cool aid test is HK's emigration/immigration and at present that
seems to be balancing following the initial exodus post the demonstrations:

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/hong-kong-migration-shuffle