When I look at the list of demands I'm pretty quick to dismiss it. Then I remember how I dismissed the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle too, and how many of the fears those protesters had were realized over the next two decades. I might be too hopeful, but I really think the city leadership should talk to them and hear them out, instead of just trying to push them over.
Is there a list of these fears somewhere? Ideally as presented at the time.
I mean look, whatever people in capitalist circles want to believe, China never really gave up on communism. They repurposed capitalism's weighing machine, and with that, there were people who got rich, which makes it look like Western-style capitalism. But the whole point of the "shadow banking system" and "state-owned enterprise" was to encapsulate a party-run state-driven "communist" system, to ensure reasonably ample work for the workers, and, to ensure a backstop to private enterprise. Maybe it's somewhat like the way Apple has baseline apps that are good enough, and then an app store for everything else. Or another analogy would be the U.S. Postal Service. Not efficient, but it works.
To be clear, globalization has been quite predatory towards weaker developing countries with less centralized authority – and hence – bargaining power. China "won" globalization by subverting it, and indeed, in hindsight, this was the only way for a developing country to win.