Then there’s the question of what segment of the population is prepared to openly talk about it, as described in the Chongqing example here. Better still would be the question of what proportion of the population is willing to do something beyond just talk. Which leads to the main question, which is who is willing to stick their neck out at the risk of annihilation by the CCP.

As much as I’d like to believe the Pew survey, it is scientific bunk as I said in #13. And while I can believe the sentiment to be particularly strong in Chongqing these days for obvious reasons, I don’t know if it is anywhere near the tipping point either there or elsewhere. But ultimately, it’s going to take a lot more than a bunch of old guys hanging around shooting the breeze…although every movement has to start somewhere and if this is the start of something bigger, fantastic.

To Jing,
you are nothing if not rigidly consistent in your 16th century mindset. The CCP might be a lot of things, and they are certainly not many things, but “jewish” is a new one…so thanks for that.

Let’s all ignore Jing. What’s your PoV on Richard’s post?

Good luck with that, although I’m sure you’ll be singing another tune after the literate Han women remove your testicles.

“I quite frankly don’t understand Xi, Li, and the rest of the team can sleep at night.”

To quote the Simpsons: “On a big pile of money with many beautiful women”.

I’m on giving you a pass conceded however, since you omitted any reference to lebensraum in the East.

I guess having a foreign passport and large amounts of money off shore just in case probably helps a bit in many cases

China needs to figure out a way to urbanize its 400 million citizens for a lot less if it wants to rebalance its economy towards domestic consumption.

Should read 400 million new urban dwellers, not citizens.

In fact, I’m wondering if they aren’t just thinking of having another ten years of essentially Jiang-ist policy (face it: that pretty much describes the last ten years) with any problems happily left to their successors.

Actually Jiang and Hu had pretty different policies. Jiang’s policies were domestically neoliberal (he backed Zhu Rongji all the way, even in the painful years of 93-94 and 98-99) while also talking tough internationally–sometimes even on the verge of overreach, as the 1996 Taiwan Straits crisis demonstrates. Essentially Jiang was taking a page from William Gladstone and applying it to China.

Hu’s foreign policy was a 3rd-World-oriented “yuan diplomacy”. This was an unqualified success for China from 2002 to 2010, though a large part of it was due to self-inflicted wounds on America’s global image from Bush the Younger. China would do well to continue with this sort of diplomacy, especially as the US and Europe wallow in continued economic malaise. In the 21st century, when hard power is much less effective at producing real foreign policy gains, Chinese economic diplomacy is probably the best tactic possible, although China should be careful not to be blindsided by ignoring social concerns (Myanmar and Zimbabwe).

On the home front, though, Hu never had a policy, or if he had one, he never had the political capital to pursue it. For all his much-vaunted emphasis on being more redistributive than his predecessors, China’s Gini index actually got worse from 2002 to 2012. The “Develop the West” initiative ended up being used as a excuse by SOEs and banks to develop a de facto monopoly on giving and receiving business loans, the most glaring and critical example of state expansion at the expense of the private sector. When time came for personnel selection in 2007, no one stepped forward and actually ran on a “platform”. (Bo Xilai doesn’t count, as his platform was “sing songs and borrow money”).

Now we come to Xi, who we frankly know very little about. How strong is he? Does he have a vision of China 2022? Can he implement it?

When I worked for a large Chinese bank in 2010, I remember the bank president, a noted princeling, giving the annual address, wherein he laid out his vision for China 2025. It involved (surprise surprise) over 12.5 trillion RMB of new loans from the banking sector into urbanization projects alone over 15 years, on top of whatever other lending the banks were doing.

That’s not the vision China needs. China can’t afford that much new investment. China needs to figure out a way to urbanize its 400 million citizens for a lot less if it wants to rebalance its economy towards domestic consumption. Xi needs to somehow convince a population who wants bigger and better that smaller and more efficient is the way to go, and he needs them to start spending money on less resource-intensive goods as well.

And that’s just on the economic front. Politically, China needs rule of law, and more than that, it needs a greater alignment between de jure responsibilities and de facto powers amongst its major institutions.

Throw an aging population, environmental stresses, international tension, and a possible financial crisis along with the burden of coming up with this new politico-economic vision and I quite frankly don’t understand Xi, Li, and the rest of the team can sleep at night.