On Thursday, China’s Communist Party revealed its leadership lineup for the next five years as seven men, most of whom oppose reform, walked out from behind a curtain in Beijing. If they fail to restructure the Chinese economy soon, however, the People’s Republic will not be able to sustain itself. At least four—and maybe as many as six—of the new Politburo Standing Committee are so-called “conservatives.” In the Chinese context, this means they are not predisposed to stopping the backward drift evident in Beijing since the middle of 2006. Then, Hu Jintao began to undo the legacy of Deng Xiaoping, whose transformational policies were encapsulated by the phrase “reform and opening up.”
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