Financial Times, Jan 25 (I): IMPORTANT

choi

My comment: A reporter writes a report--at page two, no less--about what a fortuneteller told him (in person?), who apparently paid for the priviledge. There was no forecast of politics. This report--(i)--serves as a harbinger, in my view, for an analysis of Chinese politics that the same reporter will serve up in a different section of the newspaper of the same day. I do not know if the reporter or a newspaper editor saw the irony. There is no need to read both--(2) does not provide basis of the pronostication.

(1) Jamil Anderlini, 'Master' Temple Soothsayer Sees Economic Storms Ahead; Global Insight.

Paragraphs 1 and 2:

"On the first day of every lunar new year, scores of of minor government officials, businessmen and ordinary peasant farmers congregate at a small Buddhist temple in the hills outside the eastern Chinese city of Suzhou.

"They come to consult the resident "master," the abbot of the increasingly wealthy and popular temple who has made a name for himself as an unnervingly accurate soothsayer.

(2) Jamil Anderlini, Increasing Wealth May Lead Inevitably to Democracy (at page 4 of the one-time section titled "The World 2012").

Quote:

"In late October or early November, at almost exactly the same time as Americans go to polls to elect or re-elect their president, 1.34bn Chinese citizens will find out who has been selected to rule over them for the next decade.

"This will be the first time in 20 years a US presidential election and a Chinese Communist party leadership transition have coincided and the first time that the country's top Communist has not been chosen by either Mao Zedong or Deng Xiaoping.

"In mid-January, rumours began circulating among Beijing's political chatting classes that Bo Xilai, the high-profile boss of Chongqing municipality, would soon be named as the head of Beijing city. This may sound like a promotion but would actually represent bitter defeat for Mr Bo, the 'princeling' son of a revolutionary general who most observers have predicted will be named to the all-powerful nine-member standing committee of the Politburo.

"There have even been whispers that Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang, the two anointed to take over at the end of the year as president and premier respectively, have not yet fully secured their positions.

"This extreme uncertainty underlies the fact that * * * the Communist party has not yet managed to entrench a robust succession mechanism.

"China's per capita GDP reached around $7,600 in purchasing power terms in 2010, putting it at an income level at which most countries have seen a transition from autocracy to democracy. 'The experience of others that have grown as strongly as China, suggests that democracy is very likely within the decade, says Charles Robertson, an analyst at Renaissance Capital who published a recent report on the linkage between income levels and political transition.

My comment: Forget the theory that prosperity will promote democracy. I read a few of publications in support of the theory. South Koea and Taiwan are held up as main examples--but people in these two had fouoght hard and sacrificed a lot for democarcy, which is not the case in China (the mass, the hoi polloi there anyway). Some publications use nominal number, while others use PPP, of per capita GDP, but the dots of nations in the axes of per capita GDP and democracy scatter, rather than fitting a nice line or curve. Basically my statistical training informs me there is not much correlation, if any. At any rate, China has always prided itself on being an exception to any rule.

The "hoi polloi" is Greek for "the many."