{"id":687,"date":"2007-10-15T07:36:32","date_gmt":"2007-10-15T06:36:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=687"},"modified":"2007-10-15T07:36:32","modified_gmt":"2007-10-15T06:36:32","slug":"who-will-be-chinas-gorbachev","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=687","title":{"rendered":"Who will be China&#8217;s Gorbachev?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On my return from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/China.html\">my first visit to China<\/a> seven years ago, I concluded my web site account as follows:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;The 19th century was essentially the century of Britain; the 20th century was unquestionably the century of the United States; the 21st century might become the century of China. It depends on many factors.<\/p>\n<p>It depends on the quality of the political leadership and, in the short term, Jiang Zemin is due to be succeeded by the younger Hu Jintao. It depends on the extent to which the economic changes are followed by political changes, including the development of a civil society with a free media, pressure groups, independent trade unions, and ultimately political parties.<\/p>\n<p> It depends on how capably and rapidly the economy moves from the bricks and mortar of the industrial society to the clicks and bricks of the information society. It depends on how China uses its growing industrial and military strength at home, specifically in relation to Tibet and Taiwan, and in the global marketplace.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This week, the 17the Congress of the Chinese Communist Party is being held in Beijing and one of the decisions it will debate is who should succeed Hu Jintao in 2012. In <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/china\/story\/0,,2190749,00.html\">this perceptive article<\/a>, Will Hutton speculates as to whether China&#8217;s next president will be a Gorbachev figure inspiring genuine political reforms and, if, so, whether that figure will be one the two &#8216;Lis&#8217; (there are around 230 million in China): Li Keqiang and Li Yuanchao.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On my return from my first visit to China seven years ago, I concluded my web site account as follows: &#8220;The 19th century was essentially the century of Britain; the 20th century was unquestionably the century of the United States; the 21st century might become the century of China. It depends on many factors. It [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}