For years and years, the bread and butter of China
journalism was dissidents. This is in the days before there was an economy.
Dissidents would take a public position contrary to that of the Communist
Party, the authorities would arrest them, the human rights organizations would
publicize the event, and the media would phone the mother for a comment. There
are still dissidents and there are still people in jail in China for
expressing their political views, but it has all become a sideshow.

The number of dissidents actively monitored by foreign
governments has dropped considerably, and my understanding is the number is
probably around 25 for the whole of China now. The Chinese government
is now jailing far fewer people than before for dissidence, and those that ARE
jailed, I understand, often enjoy special conditions. The reason? "The
wind can change direction," I was told.

So what’s going on with the guy being jailed for expressing
an opinion via his Yahoo email account? It is monkeys and chickens time, I
would say. Setting a high profile example to steer people away from political
use of the biggest risk the party faces – the Internet.

There are all sorts of views of Hu Jintao, but the most common view externally is probably that he is a conservative, more interested in defending the power of the Communist Party than in overseeing reforms. Part of this comes from the fact that he hardly ever says anything in public, and people are therefore free to make assumptions based on high-profile developments such as media crackdowns and Internet filterings. If he’s responsible, he must be the tough guy.

My conclusion is the opposite. This is a complete guess, but my analysis is that he and Premier Wen recognize the need for changes and are pushing them through in a way which is highly sensitive to the special characteristics of Chinese politics. A crackdown provides superficial comfort for the critics and distracts attention from the main thrust of events, which is tectonic, gradual and unacknowledged change.

Over the past 25 years, reform and change first occured in the economy, and later in society. But politics has remained almost untouched. The challenge that Hu/Wen face is that it is increasingly obvious that the political status quo is not an option long term. What to do?

The economic reforms began at the grassroots level – the baochan daohu (household responsibility for agricultural production) policy was the beginning of the end for the centrally planned economy. The social changes began with the local street communities just stopping their constant interference in people’s lives. And politics?

My impression is that there are "democratization" experiments going on in various places – villages voting for the village chief, street committees electing their own head, local party branches in Sichuan electing the party secretary by secret ballot.

What is interesting is that there is hardly any mention of this in the media, by order of the propaganda department. But each hidden development at the grassroots level is actually being orchestrated by the Central Committee with a view to the future of politics in China.

If this guess is correct, then the plan here is so unbelievably ambitious that it drawfs just about any other political transition ever attempted in human history in terms of delicacy alone.

The proof that they might actually pull it off is the history of the early 1990s, when just about every communist regime in the world collapsed, while the Chinese Communist Party avoided the fate of its socialist brothers by throwing itself at capitalism. This is a party which has learned to be flexible. And Hu at the top is the guy who is orchestrating the process.

Very impressive.

China is slowing warming to the idea that government cannot be
completely responsible for all of a country’s economic decisions.
Witness some of their comments
about
how the market must do some of this on its own. Perhaps after all the
egregious errors of prediction in the first ten 5-year plans, they are
ready to admit that it isn’t necessary to plan coal production for 2009
right now. Quote of the year is from Fan Jianping, director of the economic forecasting department of the State Information Centre, who admitted that it was necessary to determine "which area is the responsibility of the government and which should be left to the market".

Jim Yardley, a correspondent for the New York Times, has written this wonderful piece (in the International Herald Tribune) about the Dongxiang people who live in the mountains of Gansu province. An old man he interviewed there, who has never seen an airplane or watched television, described China as "a country run by people who are supposed to be helping us."

The Dongxiang are one of the poorest and most isolated ethnic minorities in China, and they belie the oft-told stories of China’s vast middle class with their rising disposable incomes. Surely, some Chinese are getting richer. But it is too simple to believe that the streets of Shanghai tell the whole story, with their Benzes and LV bags. Let us not forget that what has been true about China since time immemorial is still true: most people here live in poverty. And they continue to represent the greatest threat to China’s overall advancement.

No attribution or corroboration for this, but I have it on good authority that the long-awaited deal between Beijing and the Vatican which would see the Vatican cut its ties with Taiwan and allow the Pope to play a role in the choice of Catholic bishops and priests across China, is expected to be done well before the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

Under the terms of the deal being discussed, I understand priests and bishops would be approved jointly by the Beijing government and by the Vatican, in a similar way to that used in a number of other countries.

The underground church, loyal to the Holy See, has been an active element on China’s religious scene for decades, resulting in two Catholic church structures. But times change, and so do the relative levels of various perceived threats. The concept in Beijing of an evil Jesuit conspiracy intent on undermining communist rule is being superceded by the growing sense of threat from the activities of US protestant cults and church organizations, which are pumping in lots of money and missionaries disguised as English teachers. Time to do a deal with the Pope.

I understand the underground Catholic church in the south of China is supportive of a deal, and the holdouts are in parts of northern China.

There is also a split, I am informed, in the Chinese government about such a rapprochement with Rome. Ironically, the Ministry of Public Security is supportive of the idea and the Religious Affairs Bureau is negative because a deal would mean a reduction in its power.