China's government has managed rural-to-urban migration through heavyhanded policies that have guarded the prosperity of the cities at the expense of rural areas. …

China's leaders have shifted from relying on Orwellian strategies to policies that Huxley provides us with a better guide for understanding. … [T]o see China today as a Big Brother state is to miss much that has been actually taking place in the People's Republic.

Has the Chinese body politic finally been infected by what Beijing officials have sometimes dubbed the ‘Polish disease’…? Could China's 2002 turn out to be like Poland's 1981, a turning-point year when cleansing fevers (to invert the medical metaphor) began to take effect?

When attempting to bring pressure on Beijing, the United States should stop using vague universal standards or comparisons with the contemporary United States. Washington's criticisms of the Chinese Communist Party should instead build on Beijing's own claims about history and politics.