Most of the changes have been little more than window dressing.
Nonsense, some changes are called window dressing by critics, but others are definitely not.
In many ways, China has moved backward, especially in regards to human rights. Ask practitioners of Falun Dafa as well as various Christian groups how they feel about the progression of human rights in China. It is also one of the world's largest (perhaps still the largest -- have to check) prison for journalists in the world. Yeah, nice progress. Ever heard of the People's Armed Police? Know what their primary purpose is?
One thing I notice about critics of the Chinese government is their narrow focus. In terms of both changes to laws and changes in practice the Chinese government has expanded rights in countless areas. Apparently people who criticize the Chinese government think there has to be major reform in all areas for China to be doing anything other than backtracking.
In several areas like property rights, worker's rights, freedom of speech, and democracy there have been advancements. Economic rights are the most obvious and expansive areas, but political rights have also expanded over the years.
Human rights groups make a fuss every time some critic of China gets arrested and say it is part of a crackdown on dissent, but they never examine why it happened and who arrested them. In many cases it is a local government this critic has gone after and it is the equivalent of libel or involves state secrets. Countless critics of the Chinese government are not arrested because they avoid making unprovable or outright false allegations and stick with facts that are not considered state secrets.
Those China watchers risk losing access to China if they are overly critical of China. There have been a number of China watchers who HAVE noted that the changes are little more than window dressing and that human rights is moving in the wrong direction. Many of them have lost access to the country as a result. They reward those who carry their message to the West. That has been going on since the 1930s!
I don't doubt that some people outstay their welcome and people who are more supportive of the government get favors (duh that's how it works everywhere), but your own claim acknowledges that it is not all of them and may not even be a majority of them who reiterate claims like yours. So you acknowledge that even highly critical reporters are allowed to continue operating in China.
You are missing the point. The message is meant to fool foreigners into thinking that there is real change going on in China. It is superficial at best. Few foreigners are conversant in spoken Mandarin and even fewer can read Chinese.
Pfft, that doesn't even make sense. Few foreigners may know Chinese, but the fact many Chinese know English means the opening up in English-language news is an opening up for hundreds of millions of Chinese.
(either in the Simplified -- fake -- or Traditional -- real -- form)
Your opinion on anything China-related is becoming increasingly less meaningful to me as you continue talking.
And that is what the ChiCom government counts on and has for decades.
Except that they have been doing this for decades. I would see things in English language media sources in China that would not be found in Chinese.
I do not doubt this, but I think you are misunderstanding why it occurs and more importantly misrepresenting what it means. As there are fewer Chinese who speak English and more foreigners who do it is less of a risk to include more open information in such sources. At the same time you think it means Chinese media has remained stagnant, when this is not the case. I do know that Chinese-language sources have also become more open simply because of reports from foreign media on news from from mainland Chinese-language media. The Southern Metropolis Daily is one that I believe has often launched scathing criticism of the government.
Except that DECADES of experience have borne out the claims of the critics. You should check out the book "China Misperceived" by Stephen Mosher.
Another common tactic of opponents of the Chinese government is to cite only people who are blatantly biased against the Chinese government. I'm not even gonna bother with his book given what I have read about the man himself. There are no shortage of such books and I could care less about any specific one making unprovable claims, exaggerating statistics, or selectively citing sources.
Except that you didn't show any citations and all but ignored the cases I cited (with links) in response. You were hardly convincing in that argument because your argument had no basis in international law.
I cited several legal documents by name. Our dispute was primarily focused on whether the Japanese Instrument of Surrender was a legal treaty or not. I took the position that it was and cited relevant legal documents to back up my case and you said it wasn't without citing any documents to support that position.
The fact is, the Kosovo advisory opinion even further strengthened Taiwan's case vis a vis China. If China were so confident it had a case, it would accept Taiwan's call for an ICJ ajudication.
China does not want the dispute internationalized because it does not want to put what it considers an internal matter in the hands of other countries.
Now... have you fallen for their propoganda on the South China Sea as well?
Like I said, my opinion is not based on such things. I have not given much attention to the issue of the South China Sea, but looking over it I think the only other legitimate claims are those of Vietnam. Several sources make mention of a treaty between China and France in 1887 and if that is legitimate then it would seem to indicate the French who were in control of Vietnam renounced past claims to the Spratly and Paracel islands. I would need to look more into this, but one interesting thing is it seems the French after that never seriously exercised a claim until the Republic of China toppled the Beiyang government, which was essentially the successor to the Qing Dynasty.
Based on this it seems to me the Chinese have a more legitimate claim than Vietnam. Certainly their claims to the rest of the South China Sea islands are the most legitimate ones. None of the other countries seemed to have any interest in any of the islands until the middle of the 20th Century while China's claims date back hundreds of years.