This assumes that Chinese will want to be more like the west. Maybe this would have been true when China was economically underdeveloped, but as living standards improve they might care less what outsiders think and instead think they have something better. There's too much "White Man's Burden" ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man's_Burden ) thinking going on here.
Well. I guess most chinese people agree that "freedom of thought/speech" is a great thing. Actually, Chinese people did enjoy most of this freedom now except one thing "Promote one person, one vote and multi-party" political system in public.
Korea and Taiwan got their best economic growth stage when they are in an authoritarian stage. China is still in this stage.
Japan is an interesting story worths to study.
Besides these countries, there are many countries, such as many in Africa, doesn't become better after the democratic process.
The Chinese government has a point that "Let's concentrate and grow the economic first. After everybody has a much better economic status, we can consider other things". I think they did have a good point on it.
