Tankies were right again, as always. To repeat:
- A good chunk of American influence is generated through tacit mechanisms
- The USA wants you to "liberalize" and "democratize" your country because it means they will get to lobby your politicians, set up as many NGOs as they want, have the CIA run amok, fund religious sects and have their corporations milk your country.
We are unfair to the CPC in this forum. They were naive about economic determinism but they never gave unrestricted access to the USA for good will cookie points.