That's not a bad overview of the situation. Basically, the development in the major eastern city centers is extraordinary--far and away the most impressive and rapid developmental leap forward I've ever seen. I was in both Shanghai and Beijing 15 years ago, and they're vastly different now. Shanghai, the national commercial center, is essentially like a fully modern Western city, on a New York-sized scale. Beijing is still more sluggish, as the official political capital and not a particularly user-friendly city, but it too has commercialized incredibly. And yet, it is true that there are major problems ahead for the country, stemming both from the need to develop a healthy, modern, flexible institutional infrastructure to govern the country and manage development, and from the need to carefully manage the modernization and development of the unmentionably vast western peasant reservoirs of the country. For a good overview of the challenges facing the new leaders, I suggest taking a look at the Foreign Affairs piece by Minxin Pei in the Sep/Oct issue ("China's Governance Crisis")...
On a foreign policy level, for the foreseeable future I'd stay out of these guys' way as much as possible, and let them do what they want to do--which is concentrate on domestic development and restructuring. The next generation of foreign policy officials on our side will then have the challenge of managing relations with a new major power, but hopefully one that will have moderated a bit politically in the meantime...
tb@gottarun.com |
