Modernized China Would Be a Place to Fear

by alexoscarew | November 18, 2012 at 01:16 pm

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The coverage of last week's events in China had two points of focus. On the one hand we were shown groups of serious old gentlemen in box suits, gathered in some vast congressional amphitheatre and waiting to cast their votes for Mr Xi Jinping as a successor to the regime's current organ-grinder, Hu Jintao. "The Congress has elected a new Central Committee of the Party," President Hu revealed, in a brief address, "and replaced older leaders with younger men." To which one wanted to reply that youth in China is clearly a highly elastic concept.

All this came interspersed with footage of the vibrant and increasingly westernised life that is apparently going on in China beyond the senior citizens' clubs of political debate.