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For all those China Watchers examining tea leaves for some sign of what sort of Communist party leader and national president Xi Jinping will be, a column in Monday's edition of the magazine Study Times is looming large.
The article argues that in the pursuit of political reform, China should adopt the "Singapore model" of liberalized authoritarian capitalism.
The reason this article is attracting so much attention is that Study Times is published by the Communist party's Central Party School, and the president of the school is incoming leader Xi.
Every time the Chinese Communist Party has gone through its once-a-decade change of leaders since the death of regime founder Mao Zedong in 1976, speculation has run rife that this might be the time when the country finally gets a representative and accountable political system.
And after each change those hopes have been frustrated.
Mao's successor Deng Xiaoping introduced a form of market economy, but crushed demands for political reform in 1989.
The next leader, Jiang Zemin, stayed well clear of political reform, but began the system of collective leadership that has flowered under current President Hu Jintao.
Hu, however, has presided over a systemically corrupt and violently authoritarian state that has also revived the domination of state-owned companies over private enterprise.
From what we know of Xi - who will be appointed party leader next month and president early next year - there is no particular reason to believe that he will be an agent of political reform.
Like many of the incoming batch of leaders, he is a "princeling" from a family with an excellent revolutionary pedigree. His father was one of the leaders of the Communists' revolutionary base at Yanan in 1935 and a minister in Mao's government after he took power in 1949.
So Xi Jinping, 59, grew up in an atmosphere of wealth, privilege and the right to rule. But like very many people of his generation, he also suffered in the chaos of the Cultural Revolution and spent several years living and working with peasants in the countryside.
That experience has bred in Xi a cautious attitude and reluctance to say or do anything that might come back to haunt him.
He has floated to the surface as the logical next candidate for party leader and president because he has kept his head down, worked hard, never shied from taking tough assignments, cultivated friends throughout the party and the military, and offended no one.
However, like all the other princeling families, Xi has a lot to protect. A recent investigation by the Bloomberg news agency of public documents found that Xi's wife and close relatives, though not Xi himself, have portfolios of assets in minerals, real estate and mobile phone equipment manufacturers worth nearly $400 million.
Xi himself seems to be well aware that the business perks of power can all too easily be seen by the bulk of China's 1.3 billion people as evidence of corruption.
Xi is reported to have told delegates to an anti-corruption conference in 2004 to "rein in your spouses, children, relatives, friends and staff, and vow not to use power for personal gain."
So far, all efforts have failed to contain corruption and promote economic efficiency while maintaining the privilege of Communist party members in the one-party state.
That's the attraction of Singapore, which by deft management of what appears on the surface to be a multiparty democracy operating under the rule of law, but which in fact operates an economically vigorous and superficially graft-free one-party state.
For several years, Xi has led a team investigating the Singapore model and envisaging how it might be applied to China.
In the summer of 2010, Xi, who is now China's vice-president, had a meeting at the senior party members' beach resort of Beidaihe with Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's former prime minister and founding father whose son is now prime minister and whose family members continue to watch over every major institution in
the city state. The Singapore model is simple to describe.
There is the rule of law and an independent judiciary. But this is aimed primarily at encouraging foreign investment and businesses to Singapore.
On anything touching politics, the courts have a record of finding opposition party leaders guilty of criminal libel against the Lee family, and making them bankrupt with heavy fines that make government opponents ineligible for public office.
There is also careful gerrymandering of constituencies, including widely distributing the populations of Malay and South Asian minorities, so that even a heavy vote for the opposition has little effect on representation in parliament.
The attractions of Singapore to the Chinese Communist Party are therefore obvious.
Far less certain is whether such an intricate system of social political management can be adapted to such a vast and complex country as China.
Perhaps with the advent of the Xi era, the world will find out.
Read more: Will China adopt 'Singapore model'?
Saw this in today's local paper, I can't post the news since its subscription only so found something similar to post.
Of course local papers write it with a Singapore centric flair, thought I post it here to here the thoughts from you guys.
The article argues that in the pursuit of political reform, China should adopt the "Singapore model" of liberalized authoritarian capitalism.
The reason this article is attracting so much attention is that Study Times is published by the Communist party's Central Party School, and the president of the school is incoming leader Xi.
Every time the Chinese Communist Party has gone through its once-a-decade change of leaders since the death of regime founder Mao Zedong in 1976, speculation has run rife that this might be the time when the country finally gets a representative and accountable political system.
And after each change those hopes have been frustrated.
Mao's successor Deng Xiaoping introduced a form of market economy, but crushed demands for political reform in 1989.
The next leader, Jiang Zemin, stayed well clear of political reform, but began the system of collective leadership that has flowered under current President Hu Jintao.
Hu, however, has presided over a systemically corrupt and violently authoritarian state that has also revived the domination of state-owned companies over private enterprise.
From what we know of Xi - who will be appointed party leader next month and president early next year - there is no particular reason to believe that he will be an agent of political reform.
Like many of the incoming batch of leaders, he is a "princeling" from a family with an excellent revolutionary pedigree. His father was one of the leaders of the Communists' revolutionary base at Yanan in 1935 and a minister in Mao's government after he took power in 1949.
So Xi Jinping, 59, grew up in an atmosphere of wealth, privilege and the right to rule. But like very many people of his generation, he also suffered in the chaos of the Cultural Revolution and spent several years living and working with peasants in the countryside.
That experience has bred in Xi a cautious attitude and reluctance to say or do anything that might come back to haunt him.
He has floated to the surface as the logical next candidate for party leader and president because he has kept his head down, worked hard, never shied from taking tough assignments, cultivated friends throughout the party and the military, and offended no one.
However, like all the other princeling families, Xi has a lot to protect. A recent investigation by the Bloomberg news agency of public documents found that Xi's wife and close relatives, though not Xi himself, have portfolios of assets in minerals, real estate and mobile phone equipment manufacturers worth nearly $400 million.
Xi himself seems to be well aware that the business perks of power can all too easily be seen by the bulk of China's 1.3 billion people as evidence of corruption.
Xi is reported to have told delegates to an anti-corruption conference in 2004 to "rein in your spouses, children, relatives, friends and staff, and vow not to use power for personal gain."
So far, all efforts have failed to contain corruption and promote economic efficiency while maintaining the privilege of Communist party members in the one-party state.
That's the attraction of Singapore, which by deft management of what appears on the surface to be a multiparty democracy operating under the rule of law, but which in fact operates an economically vigorous and superficially graft-free one-party state.
For several years, Xi has led a team investigating the Singapore model and envisaging how it might be applied to China.
In the summer of 2010, Xi, who is now China's vice-president, had a meeting at the senior party members' beach resort of Beidaihe with Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's former prime minister and founding father whose son is now prime minister and whose family members continue to watch over every major institution in
the city state. The Singapore model is simple to describe.
There is the rule of law and an independent judiciary. But this is aimed primarily at encouraging foreign investment and businesses to Singapore.
On anything touching politics, the courts have a record of finding opposition party leaders guilty of criminal libel against the Lee family, and making them bankrupt with heavy fines that make government opponents ineligible for public office.
There is also careful gerrymandering of constituencies, including widely distributing the populations of Malay and South Asian minorities, so that even a heavy vote for the opposition has little effect on representation in parliament.
The attractions of Singapore to the Chinese Communist Party are therefore obvious.
Far less certain is whether such an intricate system of social political management can be adapted to such a vast and complex country as China.
Perhaps with the advent of the Xi era, the world will find out.
Read more: Will China adopt 'Singapore model'?
Saw this in today's local paper, I can't post the news since its subscription only so found something similar to post.
Of course local papers write it with a Singapore centric flair, thought I post it here to here the thoughts from you guys.
