CCP governance was good up until 2003, and then it took a really steep nose. In fact, the whole housing market is a visible manifestation of local government corruption. The housing bubble is effectively a regressive redistribution of income from poor to rich.
Wages have not kept up with inflation. For the average worker, 2012 is no better than 2003. The so called 7%-10% GDP growth has only benefited a small subset of society -- the wealthy have gotten much wealthier, while the rest stayed the same.
Added to that the constant shameless kow-towing before USA from 2003 until 2009 by those two lame leaders, and those were dark times indeed. In fact, you could say in 2003, CCP turned into KMT, or even worse, late-Qing dynasty.
There are basically two Chinese political ideologies -- the left, meaning social equality, represented by pre-2003 PRC -- and the right, meaning selfishness, money-worship and corruption, represented by late-Qing dynasty, KMT-era and post-2003 PRC.
So now that Xi Jinping is here, and going to crack down on rightist corruption, we'll going to see a shift back to pre-2003 PRC, maybe even a return to Deng-era and Mao-era socialist spiritual culture. A mini-cultural revolution to set China back on a leftist path may be in order.
As for CCP versus KMT, CCP is far superior, especially in national defense, but KMT has just one thing going for it -- KMT / ROC is closer to traditional Chinese culture, and without a clear link between modern China and dynastic China we are just another india.
Without traditional China's 文化底蕴, we are a non-continuous civilization.
