The ethnic repression outside of Tibet is relatively new.

Most of it was sudden access to international capital as a new market with Deng’s reforms and becoming the manufacturing hub of the world (with all the pollution and poor work conditions that came with it)… Unless your argument is that all people living in authoritarian regimes are functionally slaves in which case that’s hyperbole that I think does a disservice to slavery be it chattle or the more traditional kinds (and note that the pyramids weren’t built by slaves unlike the Great Wall).

Edit: I’d also dispute the economic miracle of Nazi Germany. They built up an economy based on sacrifice and war prep, but it ran out of steam in a handful of years and was close to collapse before the war even began. Even allowing for a collapse of the Chinese economy sometime soon, that’s orders of magnitude more successful with objectively less murder and ethnic cleansing (per capita) than the Nazis went for.

He’s not wrong on that point though.

Open dissent will be quashed and make you, at best, a social pariah very quickly.

The guts and persistence of groups/individuals like the '89 Mothers is astonishing and worthy of a lot of respect.

The PRC has big problems, that it is Guantanmo-ing or arresting and using as prison slaves at least three ethnic minorities for thought crimes is an atrocity.

But the huge increase of living standards for all Chinese citizens, including those of persecuted minorities when they’re not being locked up for ideological reasons is almost unbelievable.

Over a billion people have gone from not having plumbing to having indoor toilets, heating/cooling systems and access to modern health care in the space of 50 years.