Will the instinct to reinforce the rules of elite politics … undermine the leadership's ability to respond to the issues that Bo Xilai and the New Left aired?

By challenging the Chinese to consider not only the accountability of their government, but also issues of openness, trust, responsiveness, and the ‘right to know,’ the sars crisis seems likely to provide a major impetus to new thinking about relations between society and state.

China's position shifted … in early 1999 to a more active and determined effort to join the WTO. From a broad perspective, China's leadership had determined that globalization was unstoppable and that China could either join the trend or be left behind.