BEIJING - Washington's aggressive pursuit of containment of China and Beijing's difficulty in launching major economic and political reforms will likely prove an explosive mixture. Meanwhile, Japan, India, and other Asian powers exploit the logic of "two ovens".
The 18th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party was to be the springboard for economic and political renewal in the world's second power. Many Chinese - and others - hoped it would mark the beginning of a new era of reform.
The main challenge was, and remains, the fate of state-owned industries (state-owned enterprises, SOEs), which are often controlled or influenced by top party leaders or their families. The reform and even partial privatization of SOEs would on the one hand promote growth and expand the economic base of China with a view to better distribution of wealth and consumption. On the other, it could be accompanied by a gradual opening to democratic competition in the political system, which is still dominated by the party-state.
Democracy and the rule of law, albeit in a Chinese cloak, would give greater guarantees primarily to private investors, domestic and foreign. On the geopolitical level, they would rein in the crisis of negative propaganda coming from America, Europe, and China's Asian neighbors - especially India, Japan, and Vietnam - condemning the closed-off authoritarian regime in Beijing and keeping China under constant pressure.
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