The Far-Eastern Sweet Potato

China’s parade to end all parades*

Amid news that millions of migrant workers are roaming the Chinese countryside unemployed, a severe drought affecting eight breadbasket provinces and state authorities admitting that 2009 could be a year of unprecedented social unrest, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials must be looking left and right these days for ways to retain their grip on power. After all, much of the CCP’s legitimacy rests on its ability to promote economic growth and pull millions of Chinese out of poverty, which in the past two decades or so it has managed to accomplish with some success.

However, failure to sustain such growth, the pessimistic theory has it, could result in serious social unrest, rebellion and, in the worst-case scenario, the fragmentation of the country.

Op-ed, published on Tuesday in the Taipei Times, continues here.

* Unfortunately the article refers to the 60th anniversary next month of the Tibetan uprising. In reality, it will be the 50th anniversary of the March 1959 uprising. Apologies for the error.