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?

The party has implemented various modest reforms in recent years. Some are designed to allow the party to implement its policy agenda more efficiently. Others aim to make it more responsive to a changing society, or at least to appear so. All are designed to perpetuate the Communist Party's rule, not necessarily to make China more democratic.

Chinese central government officials are reluctant to allow political reform in Hong Kong to proceed too rapidly or to be driven primarily by public demonstrations and aggressive pro-democracy activists.

Relations between China and the United States are perhaps the best they have been since 1989. … What accounts for this seemingly dramatic transformation?

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.

The Bush administration should recognize that on North Korea, only limited support will be forthcoming from Beijing. The best Washington can expect is a China actively pressing the United States and North Korea to talk and willing to host or participate in further meetings. But this presumes that both Pyongyang and Washington are ready to sit down in the first place.