Good read
It's the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. There's a nice editorial in Financial Times, written by Minxin Pei, (http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1085944511618), about the "unsustainability" of the Chinese Communist Party. Here's an excerpt:
"Yet China's neo-authoritarians ignore the self-destructive logic embedded in a regime that allows no constraints on its power. Rulers in control of vast economic resources can too often be tempted to abuse their power for personal gain. Corruption soon becomes endemic. Eventually, the state that was supposed to nurture development degenerates into a predatory regime. China needs not look far for an example of such degeneration - Suharto's Indonesia was a textbook case of a neo-authoritarian regime falling prey to rapacious crony capitalism.
Despite all its economic achievements since Tiananmen, China's progress towards a more open and democratic society has stalled. Contrary to its promises, the party has done little to strengthen the rule of law or expand democracy. Predictably, unconstrained power has spawned perhaps the most voracious official corruption in Chinese history as many members of the party, sensing the unsustainability of the current status quo, rush to cash in their investment in the regime.
This destructive dynamic threatens China's future and the party's own survival. The Communist party must rewrite its social contract with the Chinese people and start a process of political reform before its luck runs out."
