China Doomed in 10-15 Years: Minxin Pei

choi

Minxin Pei, How Much Longer Will the East Be Red?  If history is any guide, the Chinese Communist Party has at most 10-15 years left. Wall Street Journal Asia, May 2, 2012 (op-ed).
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB ... ?mod=googlenews_wsj

Two consecutive paragraphs:

"This makes China an obvious authoritarian outlier. Of the 91 countries with a higher per capita GDP than China now, 68 are full democracies, according to Freedom House, 10 are "partly free" societies and 13 are "not free." Of the 13 countries classified as "not free," all except Belarus are oil producers. Of the 10 "partly free" countries, only Singapore, Tunisia and Lebanon are non-oil producers. Tunisia has just overthrown its long-ruling autocracy. Prospects of democracy are looking brighter in Singapore. As for Lebanon, remember the Cedar Revolution of 2005?

"This brings us to the second number, 74—the longest lifespan enjoyed by a one-party regime in history, that of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1917-1991). One-party rule in Mexico had only a slightly shorter history, 71 years (1929-2000). In Taiwan, the Kuomintang maintained power for 73 years if we count its time as the ruler of the war-torn mainland before it fled to Taiwan in 1949.

Note:
(a) Cedar Revolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedar_Revolution
(triggered by the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on Feb 14, 2005)
(b)
(i) Mexican general election, 1988
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_general_election,_1988
(Ruling party candidate Carlos Salinas de Gortari won, 50.7% v 31.1%; "Years later, former president Miguel de la Madrid [1934-2012; president 1982-1988] admitted to the New York Times and in an autobiography that the presidential elections had been rigged to make the Institutional Revolutionary Party win, and that three years after the election, all ballots were burnt in order to remove all evidence of the fraud")
(ii) Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuauht%C3%A9moc_C%C3%A1rdenas
(left the then-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to found opposition, Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD); senator (1974-1980) and governor (1980-1986) of state of Michoacán; "On July 6, 1988, the day of the elections, a system shutdown of the IBM AS/400 that the government was using to count the votes occurred. * * * When the system was finally restored, Carlos Salinas was declared the official winner")