>>I would have thought the with the mainland's economic growth rate, that a union with Taiwan would become inevitable as the two economies integrated and the legal system in China evolved to include better defined property rights and individual rights.<<
I would hope so too. But that is mostly decided by Taiwan, if not entirely. And it is hard to say what are the majority of the Taiwanese think.
>>I would also expect that China would use HK as an experimental zone, to see how well different degrees of democracy worked, and then avoid the failures and duplicate the successes.<<
China cannot use HK for much experiment, not in the next 45 years, since China has pledged to leave HK alone, and I expect China to keep that promise. China may only steps in when the national security gets threatened.
As for so-called democracy, methink, one should NOT think China will adopt the Western democracy as it is, since the reality shows that the Western democracy has a lot of problems itself too. China will slowly experiment its own form/cause of democracy. And I think I read somewhere that some city now is having some kind of experiment for election of city officials. But since the education/living standard in cities and rural areas vary so greatly, the process will be very slow. Unlike economic reform, political reform will always be harder and take much longer time.
>>Prehaps one of my basic assumptions is wrong : I would assume that having delivered record setting economic growth in the past 15 years, the CCP would feel secure both as a government and of their place in history. They are the leaders under which more people were lifted from poverty than any other time in human history... <<
This is not a question of feeling secure or not, at least not entirely. Everyone who is familiar with China's history knows stake is high, there are many many serious problems waiting to be solved. 2000-3000 years of history tells China that a little misstep will cost the nation dearly, not only in human capital but other things as well. So caution can never go wrong.
You are right that a lot of people have been lifted from poverty in China, but it is only a very small number comparing to the people who are still in poverty. So the task is not even half-way done yet. The next 20 years is crucial. |
