I.H.T. Op-Ed Contributor A Color Revolution in China? Keep It Red By ERIC LI

For all its shortcomings, the current one-party state in China is a status-quo power in two important respects. First, it is the initiator and protector of China’s enormously successful free-market development model. One of history’s greatest ironies is that in today’s world, the most pro-market party is the Communist Party in China. True, China’s economic success ensures the party’s political survival, but this has also ensured social peace in addition to improving the livelihoods, individual liberty and personal dignity of hundreds of millions of ordinary Chinese.
Second, in spite of the recent perceptions of an assertive China, the Communist Party is not seeking global hegemony or even regional domination. Its foreign policy is based on pragmatism and realistic national interests, not grandiose projects of ideological self-glorification. The reason is quite simple: Given China’s economic interdependence with the rest of the world, and its dependence on economic performance as a source of legitimacy, the Party has all the incentives in the world to maintain a pragmatic foreign policy. China is perhaps the greatest beneficiary of the status quo, so why change it? More at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/opinion/07iht-edli.html?_r=1

Related articles

• Communist Party of China sets agenda for five years (topinews.com)
• WikiLeaks: China's Politburo a cabal of business empires (telegraph.co.uk)
• WikiLeaks reports forget who runs China (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)