spat
.700 Nitro Express
Except we never enforced the iron curtain. We welcomed anyone who managed to escape.our government is far too corrupt, greedy, and spineless to even come CLOSE to the chutzpah needed to try to enforce another "iron curtain". They are way too focused on turning America into the next China to worry about REAL China.
The curtain was entirely the Soviet's creation.
China has thrived so well because they abandoned the idea of isolating the west, and they said "let's trade them under the table instead by leveraging our near-slave labor and DGAF environmental rules".
That is a very effective strategy, but it only works for so long. They are about out of time.
You don't need to be all "save every spotted owl amd special slug" insane like we are, but you can't just trash your environment forever either.
Also, you can run the near slave labor when your people are all dirt poor, but once you become prosperous that doesn't work anymore.
So, in short, their current policies worked very well to get them out of the hole Mao dug them into, but they are about at the end of how far those can take them.