Henry at Crooked Timber is refereeing the Barnett-Mann fight, and Brad DeLong looks on:

Barnett’s thesis isn’t crazy, but it isn’t obviously and necessarily right either. As I read it, if you want to go with Barnett, you are betting that greater wealth and external economic ties are going to lead to democratization in China. If you want to go with Mann, you are betting that economic growth isn’t necessarily relevant to democratization in China and that external economic ties only help cement democratization when they go hand-in-hand with direct or indirect forms of political pressure towards democracy. Neither of these arguments is obviously wrong to me. As Brad has argued previously, hostility to China may result in a self-fulfilling prophecy where China becomes alienated from the West precisely because Chinese leaders feel themselves to be untrusted and unloved. But it may also be that China hasn’t any real interest in becoming part of any established international democratic order either, and that a certain amount of distrust and hedging is warranted. I wouldn’t want to lay hard money on either side of this bet, but Barnett’s overblown attack on Mann doesn’t do much to persuade me that his side of the argument is right.

If there is any hope for China's political democratization, it comes from Japan and South Korea, not the US, at least not directly.