The John Batchelor Show

VIDEO: Coup

March 12, 2015

Wednesday  11 March 2015/ Hour 1, Block A:Arthur Waldron, Lauder professor of International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania, in re: David Shambaugh, of Brookings, writes that the Party is in disarray; with this article, a pillar of Chinese despotism for forty years is shifting. Xi is acting like an old-fashioned emperor who wants to get something done, not just swan around. He goes after tigers (rich and corrupt officials); if he fails and the tigers get loose, there'll be something like chaos or civil war, and if he succeeds he'll have a cleaner situation. Xi says he believes in Communism; "None of these Western Chinese specialists has ever imagined that we Chinese cd have a peaceful, democratic transition."  Xi toward legality and transition? Beginning of an exit from Communism?   See Global Times. He's on a knife-edge right now.  If Xi, like Gorbachov, says that Communism can be made to work, then he'll perforce fail.  . . .  None of them [the – in effect- warlords] has legitimacy; but according to the Net, the people are more interested  in Xi's deeds than in anything since Tien An Men.   It’s not capital flight, it’s China hand flight. It’s taken them only forty years of full-time study of he RC to decide that the system doesn’t work; but many of us have known that since the 1950s.