Anyone with ideas about real political reform would face this entrenched ruling class, determined to defend its wealth and privileges, and well able to do so as long as the economic pot can be kept bubbling. The 1989 uprising was a political crisis. The student marchers, and the millions of citizens who lined the streets to cheer them on, were sick of the Communist Party s lies, bullying, and corruption. The Communists have, in their own way, addressed some of these issues. The snooping and bullying has been much reduced, and citizens who do not attempt to organize themselves into large groups can say and do anything they please.
Corruption continues to soar, but is now more decently veiled.
Particularly outrageous offenders are sometimes arrested and shot, when they have no powerful political patron to protect them. The political issue is therefore moot, but there are still two other kinds of crisis to which China is vulnerable. This will happen when the gross inefficiencies in China s economy cause it to fall behind the sleeker, less corrupt models of east Asia and the West. In China, nothing much changes. In 1989 the Chinese Communist Party successfully rode out a political crisis.