As China Flexes Muscle, Obama Frets Over Rival’s Weakness    

David J. Lynch, 06/30/14

China is tailgating Japanese warplanes, playing chicken with Vietnamese ships and questioning America’s toughness. Yet it isn’t Chinese strength that most worries President Barack Obama, it’s Chinese fragility.

As China’s economy grows at its slowest pace in 24 years, the country’s domestic strains are drawing increased attention. While Americans stew over the prospect of being eclipsed by a new superpower, their president frets about instability in the world’s second-largest economy.

“We welcome China’s peaceful rise,” Obama said in a recent NPR interview. “In many ways, it would be a bigger national security problem for us if China started falling apart at the seams.”

Though no one expects that to happen any time soon -- if ever -- Chinese President Xi Jinping confronts an array of potential triggers for unrest. After more than three decades of growth that has raised per capita income to more than 17 times its 1978 level, China’s breakneck change is only intensifying.

“China is undertaking massive transformations that are necessary for modern society, but in every case are socially destabilizing,” said Kenneth Lieberthal, who handled Asian affairs in President Bill Clinton’s White House. “And they’re doing every one of them at a pace, scope and scale no country has ever tried before.”

High Stakes

The U.S. has a great deal riding on the outcome. China is the single largest holder of U.S. debt with $1.3 trillion in Treasury securities, and Sino-U.S. trade last year topped $562 billion, up 38 percent from five years earlier. In an extreme scenario, major turmoil could spark massive refugee flows or even endanger control of China’s estimated 250 nuclear warheads, said Lieberthal, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

“That’s not a future you want to contemplate,” he said.

Most analysts don’t anticipate China facing such a situation. The country’s power and prosperity seem to expand by the day and are at relative heights last witnessed perhaps two centuries ago.

Awareness of China’s weak spots nonetheless shapes U.S. policy, said, said Ely Ratner, former lead political officer on the State Department’s China desk. The U.S. cooperates with China on developing clean energy, equipping a sometimes-rival to meet its domestic goals. And while irritating Chinese leaders by talking about human rights, the U.S. stops short of backing direct challenges to Communist Party rule.

“The U.S. very much wants to support China’s stability and economic growth,” said Ratner, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. “We don’t engage in certain activities that would undermine their economic and political stability, in part because it wouldn’t be in our interest.”

U.S.-China Meeting

The cooperative dimension of the relationship will be on display July 9-10 during the next meeting of the Strategic & Economic Dialogue. U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew and Secretary of State John Kerry and Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang and State Councilor Yang Jiechi will be co-chairmen.

As U.S. officials arrive in Beijing for the talks, forces unleashed by China’s pell-mell modernization present new challenges. More than 1 million people each month are migrating from farms to cities, leaving behind everything they know for an uncertain future.

Since 2004, China’s urban numbers have grown by 200 million people, akin to the population of Brazil, and the government plans to shift more people to the cities. By 2030, China will have 1 billion city-dwellers, up from 731 million today, according to the World Bank.

Implicit Bargain

While the movement from rural to urban areas generally increases income, it’s socially destabilizing and alienating, said Lieberthal.

Since the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, China’s Communist Party has preserved social stability with a mixture of economic growth and authoritarian muscle. The foundation of public order is an implicit bargain: The party retains its monopoly on power in return for providing an ever-better standard of living.

That bargain is now under pressure. Environmental damage -- air pollution that a government adviser this year labeled “unbearable” along with water shortages -- undercuts the notion that life is improving. In the eastern city of Zhongtai, 60 people were arrested last month after protests against a proposed waste incinerator turned violent with police and private cars overturned, according to state-run People’s Daily.

The government is engaged in a transition to a new economic model, which will require a downshift to slower, more sustainable growth than the 10 percent annual average between 2005 and 2011.

Slowing Growth

“A lot of the stability in China is growth-dependent, so the Communist Party’s legitimacy base is rather narrow,” said Yasheng Huang, founder of the China Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “The probability of instability increases fairly substantially when growth slows down.”

In the first quarter, the economy eased to a 7.4 percent annual growth pace en route to 5 percent by 2026, according to the State Council’s Development Research Center and the World Bank. That comes after a three-decade expansion that lifted some boats higher than others: China’s rich-poor gap is wider than in the U.S., according to a recent University of Michigan study.

Economic reforms aimed at giving market forces a decisive role in allocating resources will make losers of individuals and institutions that have profited from the current system. Allowing prices of labor, capital and energy to rise may “challenge the commitment of top leaders to the reform process,” wrote economist Barry Naughton, a China specialist at the University of California, San Diego.

Credit Dependence

The task is complicated by the need to wean the economy from its dependence on credit. Since the 2008 financial crisis, China’s debt has risen to 245 percent of gross domestic product, according to a June 12 report by Standard Chartered Bank.

China’s leaders have their own worries. Xi has unleashed an anti-corruption drive targeting high-ranking party and military officials in what may be the broadest crackdown in the party’s history.

The latest victim of the corruption purge is Liu Tienan, former deputy director of the economic planning ministry, whom prosecutors said will be tried on charges of accepting bribes. Liu, 59, accepted what prosecutors said were “extremely large” payments.

Still, the party has managed to hold together a country of 1.3 billion people journeying from deprivation to prosperity. Martin Whyte, a Harvard University sociologist, compared survey data on Chinese attitudes in 2009 and 2004 and found no evidence of what he called the “social volcano” view.

“Popular acceptance of current inequalities remains widespread, despite continuing increases in China’s income gaps,” he concluded.

Dismissing U.S.

China’s wealth has translated into a stronger military and more assertive regional posture. Chinese fighter jets have buzzed Japanese surveillance planes over disputed East China Sea islands while Chinese naval vessels have jostled Vietnamese boats in waters that both sides claim in the South China Sea.

Earlier this month, Chinese bravado bubbled over at a regional security conference in Singapore. Major General Zhu Chenghu, a professor at China’s National Defense University, warned U.S. allies in Asia not to count on a strong American presence in the region, likening the U.S. response to the Ukraine crisis to “erectile dysfunction.”

Soothing Suspicions

Rather than indicating genuine concern over China’s stability, Obama’s comments may reflect an effort to soothe Chinese leaders’ suspicions about the president’s decision to devote more attention to Asia, said Andrew Nathan, a China specialist at Columbia University in New York.

Chinese leaders view Obama’s so-called “rebalance” as a sign he wants to prevent the emergence of a rival superpower. By underscoring the American stake in a unified, prosperous China, Obama may be trying to ease such worries.

China’s leaders are aware of their vulnerabilities. Though the government stopped releasing official protest tallies in 2005, it’s clear that public disturbances happen daily. Sun Liping, a professor at Tsinghua University, estimated three years ago that there had been 180,000 protests, strikes, riots and other “mass incidents” in 2010, twice as many as in 2006.

“They face some very serious social order challenges,” said Murray Scot Tanner, senior research scientist in the China Studies Division of CNA Corp., a research group in Arlington, Virginia. “And some of them appear to be getting worse.”

To contact the reporter on this story: David J. Lynch in Washington at dlynch27@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Steven Komarow at skomarow1@bloomberg.net Mark McQuillan

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-29/as-china-flexes-muscle-obama-frets-over-rival-s-weakness.html?cmpid=yhoo

China’s Risky Reforms

Ian Bremmer/David Gordon, 02/14/14

NEW YORK – When it comes to economic reform, China’s leaders no longer believe that time is on their side. With a new sense of urgency, President Xi Jinping and his inner circle are attempting one of the most ambitious economic and social-policy reform plans in history.

But in any authoritarian country, change creates risk. Consider the scale of the proposed plans. For China to reach the next stage of its development, a much larger share of Chinese-made products now destined for Europe, America, and Japan must be sold to consumers inside China. This shift will require a big increase in local purchasing power – and, therefore, an enormous transfer of wealth from large domestic companies to Chinese households.

In addition, China’s leaders appear to be on the verge of approving 12 new regional free-trade zones, which will drive competition and efficiency on a new scale in many economic sectors. They also recognize the need for further liberalization of the country’s financial system, a move that will require tolerance for outright defaults on bad loans – and the anxiety and anger that comes with them.

Here, as in other areas of the reform plan, change is dangerous; but Xi has come to believe that pressing ahead is vitally important if China is to take the next crucial steps toward building a middle-class, digital-age economy. Moreover, the reforms are crucial for the Chinese Communist Party’s long-term hold on power.

The leadership will also try to increase state-owned enterprises’ efficiency by withholding support (and money) from those that underperform, potentially putting large numbers of workers out on the streets. And the government’s steps to tackle China’s heavily polluted air and water, a problem that officials can no longer ignore or explain away, will weigh on short-term growth as well.

In the past, the CCP has responded to slowing growth with a surge in state spending meant to create jobs and keep the system humming. This time, the authorities are allowing growth to slow at a measured pace, partly because the slowdown is a precondition for the kind of growth that does not depend on the state, and partly because the slowdown helps sustain demand for reform.

To accomplish these goals, Xi is centralizing power, launching a charm offensive, and cracking down on official corruption and extravagance. He is also using anti-corruption and reeducation efforts to intimidate (real and potential) reform opponents within the CCP. Finally, the leadership has created new party institutions, answerable directly to top officials, to ensure that all changes are implemented as planned.

Nonetheless, while the reforms are crucial for China’s future, they are certain to produce a backlash. Some of the losers have the means to defend their interests: purged officials, companies, and industries that face new regulatory scrutiny, as well as firms forced out of business, have well-placed friends within China’s enormous bureaucracy. Moreover, free-trade zones bring greater competition, including from foreign firms, which raises risks of increased unemployment and capital flight.

China’s leaders have long feared publicly visible divisions within the elite, given the risk that infighting could expose sensitive secrets. Xi’s proposed reforms are just the sort of changes that might have this effect.

That risk is much greater today than it was ten years ago. With hundreds of millions of Chinese now online, and other twenty-first-century communication tools available to an unprecedented number of citizens, ideas and information cross China’s internal and external borders with unprecedented ease and speed. In response, the CCP continues to develop new technologies to stifle or redirect dissent; but the battle for control of China’s public discourse is not one that the country’s leaders can win every day for the foreseeable future, and they know it.

There are broader questions as well. The authorities appear confident that they can manage the risks generated by a gradually slowing economy. What if they are wrong? What if bank defaults pile up, creating a major credit crisis? What if unrest grows to levels not seen in many years?

These scenarios are highly unlikely in 2014. But early signals suggest that if trouble develops, the party will choose a crackdown over concessions, and there is no guarantee that party unity will hold in such a scenario.

For outsiders, the reform process also poses risks that extend well beyond the global economic fallout of a sharp Chinese slowdown. The country’s neighbors, particularly Japan, have the most to fear. If reforms become broadly unpopular or expose dangerous divisions within the leadership, the government will have good reason to divert public attention from controversies at home by picking fights abroad. Frictions between China and the Philippines, Vietnam, and others in the South China Sea persist, but confrontations with Japan, including over territorial disputes in the East China Sea, are more likely to cause the most damage.

No one in power in either country wants a war, but diplomatic dust-ups between China and Japan, the world’s second and third largest economies, respectively, have already taken a toll on their commercial relations. In particular, Japanese companies operating in China have sustained significant reputational and financial damage during recent episodes of trouble between the two governments.

Conflict with the United States is unlikely for the moment. At such a delicate time internally, China would gain nothing from antagonizing the US. But trouble with US allies, particularly Japan, could draw the US into a fight that it would strongly prefer to avoid.

In short, China is on the brink of large, necessary, and dangerous transformations that promise to change the country for the better – or make everything, including regional stability, much worse. The entire world has a large stake in what happens next.

Read more at

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/ian-bremmer-and-david-gordon-caution-that-the-leadership-s-proposed-reforms-heighten-the-risk-of-instability-at-home-and-abroad#SmjaGx2IGe12cthA.99

【美國之音中文網／記者斯洋、任禺陽／華盛頓電】

2014年，亞太地區有哪些安全熱點問題需要關注？美國專家為您列出清單。其中習近平鞏固權力後，中國將何去何從，成為亞太地區2014年首要關注的熱點問題。

中共18屆三中全會後，隨著中國國家安全局和全面深化改革小組的建立，中國國家領導人習近平迅速鞏固權力，集黨、政、軍、經濟、外交等大權於一身。

鞏固權力後的習近平一方面高談經濟改革，另一方面又加緊了對政治異議人士，甚至是政治溫和派的打壓。中國新公民運動領導人許志永最近被判刑四年就是最新一例。許志永的訴求包括要求中國官員公佈財産併為農民工子女爭取平等的教育權。

習近平政治上保守，經濟上放開的做法令許多西方學者感到困惑不解，因為他們相信沒有政治改革就沒有經濟的改革，而習近平的經濟改革也需要法律和制度為其作出保障。

美國智庫戰略與國際研究中心的中國問題專家克里斯托弗‧約翰遜（Christopher Johnson）認為， 2014年習近平的權力還會進一步增加，他這樣解釋習近平看似矛盾的做法。

他説：「如果你能看到習近平上台的根本原因，那是因為中共體制內的重要人物認為，他是最有可能維護共産黨的領導地位的人。這是他的第一要務，不是改善經濟，也不是中國的崛起，而是維護黨的統治。他們認為，他是能夠完成這個任務的最佳人選。」

他説，理解了習近平掌權的第一原則，就容易理解習近平的所作所為。對現在的中共政權來説，能否兌現經濟利益是中國共産黨維持權力的基礎，所以，習近平要進行經濟改革。政治上來説 ，中國一直以來採用是高壓的列寧主義統治，而中國社會正在經歷巨變，中國高層認為，如果不加以控制，這將會是災難。

他説：「我想，他們覺得他們要進行一點控制，這樣的做法有沒有道理？這樣的做法能否成功？這是都是問題，但這並不意味著他們不相信這些。」

美國約翰斯‧霍普金斯大學中國項目主任戴維‧藍普頓（David Lampton）在自己的新書--《跟隨中國領導人--治理中國，從鄧小平到習近平》中 指出，中國領導人如果以為他們能夠永久保持政治和社會穩定，而不必對國家的管理系統進行大張旗鼓的改革，那就大錯特錯了。

他説：「如果我要指出問題的話， 那就是下層結構已經改變，但是上層的管理結構卻沒有與之協調。」

他説，這就要求中國必須有一套明顯不同的政治結構，尤其是對於法治必須有一個更強的承諾，在司法和立法方面有一套更可靠的機制，只有這樣才能解決衝突、兼顧不同利益、合理分配資源。中國也需要更好的政府管理、透明度和問責制。否則的話，中國勢必陷入比過去40多年來所經歷的更加嚴重的政治動亂。

《華盛頓郵報》社論版編輯弗雷德‧海亞特（Fred Hiatt）説，他與中國的很多精英階層的人接觸，很多人都懷疑習近平的做法能否成功。

他説：「很多人的感覺是，我們需要對經濟進行進一步的改革，但是，我們不相信現在的領導層有信心做到這一步。」

戰略與國際研究中心的約翰遜説，中國目前的經濟改革方案是幾十年來變化最大的提議。他認為如果改革成果，應該對美國有利，如果中國失敗，所有人都會失敗。美國應該利用《雙邊投資協議》以及《跨太平洋夥伴關係協議》等政策工具幫助中國達到經濟改革的目標。

習近平上台後，中國在外交也似乎越來與強硬。2014年，中國是否會繼續強勢外交是亞太地區需要關注的熱點之二。我們將在下一集為你分析。

【2014/02/03 美國之音中文網】

http://mag.udn.com/mag/world/storypage.jsp?f_ART_ID=499068

Activists converge on eastern Chinese city                 

Didi Tang, 02/08/14

BEIJING (AP) — Scores of activists from around China have been converging on an eastern town during the Chinese New Year holiday to demand an investigation into the death of a fellow activist's father at a government building.

Activists are pointing to the outpouring as a sign of resilience in their movement despite a recent spate of court convictions cracking down on rallies by fellow members of loosely knit grassroots groups. They estimate 60 to 100 activists have gone to the Shandong province city of Qufu during a period usually devoted solely to family reunions.

"More of us should move from the Internet to real life and show the power we have as citizens," Yang Chong, an activist who traveled from the southern city of Guangzhou to Qufu for the rally, said in a telephone interview.

The Qufu gathering was triggered by the sudden death of Xue Fushun, the father of Xue Mingkai, a dissident who has been jailed twice for his opposition to China's one-party rule.

Friends and supporters say the elder Xue went to the prosecutors' office building in Qufu to argue for his freedom after local authorities kept him and his wife detained in a guesthouse — a common tactic to quell dissent by also targeting the relatives of dissidents. He fell to his death from the building's fourth floor on Jan. 29.

Police ruled the incident a suicide and declined to investigate the death further. The family's lawyers and supporters say the death is suspicious and are demanding an unbiased investigation.

In this Feb. 7, 2014 photo released by Citizen Watchers Group, three members of a spontaneous Citize …

"He was seeking freedom from state security, and how on earth would he want to kill himself?" Beijing-based rights lawyer Jiang Tianyong said.

A worker at a Qufu police station said he could not reveal more details because the case is under investigation, but he confirmed that many supporters of Xue's family had visited the police station. He refused to give his name, as is common among government workers when speaking about sensitive cases. A man who answered the phone at the Qufu government said Friday he had no knowledge about the case.

The first grassroots activist arrived on Jan. 31 in Qufu, known as the hometown of the ancient Chinese educator Confucius. More arrived in the ensuing days, eventually numbering at least 60 and forming an impromptu citizen watchers group, according to interviews with six of them.

The visits began just days after the conviction and sentencing of Xu Zhiyong, the Beijing-based founder of the New Citizens Movement, to four years in prison for taking part in small public rallies, amid a broader crackdown on dissent. Several other members of the movement, as well as a key member of a Guangzhou-based group called Southern Street Movement, also were put on trial last month.

Many of the activists showing up in Qufu are from the Southern Street group, but they have been joined by other activists based elsewhere.

They say they have been rounded up, interrogated by police and sent away on trains, although many have managed to get off the trains and stay in the vicinity.

"The government tries to create fear, but as an awakened citizen, I must go forward even if there is fear," said Ou Biaofeng, who traveled from the southern province of Hunan to join the Qufu rally.

http://news.yahoo.com/activists-converge-eastern-chinese-city-061033443.html

2014 Is a Make or Break Year for China              

Fareed Zakaria, 01/13/14 (to be appeared on the Time Magazine)

2014 is the year of the horse in China. But for the rest of us, it might prove to be the year of China. The country faces a historic turning point:

either it will revamp its economic system, deal with some of its growing environmental and social problems and set itself up for another decade of growth and stability that will ensure it becomes the world's largest economy, or 2014 will be the year that the great Chinese miracle hits a serious road bump -- with seismic consequences.

People have been making such predictions about China for years, even decades, and the worst has never come to pass. While it has faced formidable challenges -- creating a market economy from scratch, building world-class infrastructure, urbanizing hundreds of millions of peasants -- Beijing has adjusted its policies along the way and continued to grow at an unprecedented pace.

But this time it feels different. China has built up economic imbalances for some years, and they are not sustainable for much longer. The basic problem is that for almost a decade, China's economic growth has been fueled by cheap credit and government spending -- a classic developing-nation problem. Even before the financial crisis of 2008, Beijing's top officials acknowledged that the economy was, in former Premier Wen Jiabao's words, "unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable." The government needed to stop the flow of easy money to infrastructure, state-owned companies and the housing sector. But this decision was tough to implement, since growth was dependent on easy money. In addition, those getting the money were politically powerful, including state-owned companies and local party bosses.

Then came the financial crisis and the global economic slowdown. But slowing down was not an option for Beijing: the Communist Party's legitimacy derives not from ideology but from competence. So it pursued the world's largest Keynesian response to the crisis, spending over 10% of GDP to keep the economy going. It worked. China's growth rate has averaged more than 9% in the past few years.

But the price has been high. According to a column in the Wall Street Journal by Morgan Stanley's Ruchir Sharma, China's total public and private debt is over 200% of GDP, an unprecedented level for any developing country. Businesses and local governments have piled on debt. Borrowing has fueled a property boom. Without serious policy changes that wean large sectors of the economy off cheap credit relatively soon, this is a bubble that is going to burst and a model that cannot keep performing.

Beijing faces other serious challenges. Chinese people almost anywhere in the country experience serious air and water pollution, and they have begun to complain vocally. They are also increasingly outraged by something almost as ubiquitous: corruption. China's corruption is masked because of the state's tight control of the media, but the Communist Party is well aware of the problem and has pledged to revamp its systems of promotion and party discipline to ensure that officials are less corrupt and more focused on ecological damage, not just growth.

Any such changes are bound to face political resistance and backlash from within the Communist Party and from some powerful sectors of society. President Xi Jinping has launched an anticorruption campaign, though many in China believe enforcement has been selective. He has also sought to stabilize the party's power by tightening the noose on any critics in the media and universities and even those who are private businesspeople. Xi has created a national security council focused largely on internal security, a sign of not only where his priorities lie but also where he sees his greatest challenges.

I'm not ready to bet against China. Its leadership has shown itself to be capable of difficult decisions and smart execution. Xi has accumulated an unusual degree of authority and clearly intends to use it to go down in history as the man who reformed China's system to make the country stronger and more powerful.

If China's leaders manage this transition well, the country will emerge stronger and more stable and become the largest economy in the world. If they don't, China will likely face a slump, one that will look a lot like those of other high-flying developing countries -- such as South Korea and Taiwan -- that ended a period of rapid growth and settled into a more normal trajectory. In many of those cases, slow growth coincided with widespread protests and the opening up of the political system.

Keeping China's growth model going will prove hard enough. But to do that with all the associated political challenges will test even China's extraordinary leaders.

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2161668,00.html

China's moon landing: a game Chang'er               

China's mission to the moon was driven by the need to demonstrate its power

Observer editorial, The Observer, 12/14/13

The success of China's Chang'e 3 moon mission landing is to be welcomed as a scientific triumph. Placing a package of instruments safely on the lunar surface has been achieved by only two other nations, the US and the former Soviet Union. As an illustration of its flourishing technological expertise, China could not have done better – though the vast investment required to achieve this goal raises an obvious question: why travel to the moon at all?

There are several answers. For a start, the moon is rich in minerals that could one day provide us with key materials that have become depleted on Earth. The moon is also a good place to test technologies needed to explore other, more distant worlds. These are both good reasons to make lunar journeys, though neither was central to China's motivations. Its prime goal was far simpler. In Chang'e 3, it has shown the world, and Asia in particular, that it is now a comprehensive technological power. For a nation that has begun to flex its military muscles, its presence on another world perfectly demonstrates its national prowess. We should take note.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/14/china-successful-moon-landing-power

我猜想另一個可能是李克強不願意替這個宣示的主旨或大方針背書。也就不必負你所說的成敗責任。

我認為這個草案滿篇空話，華而不實。或許李克強認為改革力道不夠。我對它的討論即將完成，發表後請多指教。

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我沒有質疑你，我衹是覺得這事很怪。

意識形態、外交、國防、維穩這些總理是管不到的，大權在總書記手上。經濟和民生總書記是管不到的，大權在總理手上。總書記和總理分權，這在胡趙時期已經如此。趙還曾經找鄧抱怨胡總書記干涉他的總理職權。

現在七常委中排名最末的常務副總理在經濟體制大改革的設計決策中跳到排名第二的總理頭上，總理還竟然不在起草小組之內，這完全不正常。以後經濟到底由誰負總責？成，是誰之功？敗，由誰擔過？李張二人在國務院內如何協調？

李是團派，習開始拉拔自己人，張高麗看來是他的盟友了，負責牽制李克強，像是挖牆腳的樣子。

李克強很明顯是被習近平成功地排除在起草小組之外。七常委之間發生的事外面不知道。

習近平為什麼要排掉李克強？憑什麼能成功地把張高麗拉進來取代李克強？

『加上以上所分析「制度」的制約，我認為「政爭說」可能是一種過度的解讀』--- 我認為你這個結論的依據不足。不過反正你我都是猜，所以也不必爭。

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我不是「中共問題」專家，無法有板有眼的回答你所提的四個疑問。

就我所知，中共的決策方式是「共識模式」；而獨裁體制下，權力的配置通常是恐怖平衡。如果政治局其他常委中多數人感到受威脅，「制衡」機制自然會形成。這是人類「求生存」的本能。

中共的領導模式在理論上是總書記當家，自江澤民開始，總書記又兼任國家主席；從而，一般政治學中「總統制」的概念並不適用於分析中共權力結構。同時，有鑒於過去鬥爭的慘烈，鄧小平建立了十年任期(交班)制和黨務與政務分治制。基於上述恐怖平衡的原則，大概不會有人願意冒著犯眾怒的風險來更改這個行之20多年歷史的制度。

18大以後，「團派」人馬已居於要津，李克強總理是所謂「團派」的領袖，他並非一位「光棍」總理。他應該不致有大權旁落之虞。「起草小組」並非常設機構，李總理未列名其中，當然出人意料，但頂多是一時面子掛不住。因此，我相信李總理會完成法定任期與行使既定權力。何況，如果今後四年的經濟發展不如預期，則四年後下次政治局期中換屆的時候，李總理不無板回一城的機會。

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『即使是大陸的自由派都擬不出這樣超前的改革方案，』這句話太誇張了。

習近平上任一年，攬權能成功到現在這樣，能藉設立國安會來擴張自己黨王+國王的法定權力，能在起草人這個層級排掉李克強，我很好奇他是怎麼做到的。

斯土之最高權力從【無外力制衡之七常委制】變成【無外力制衡之大總統制】。【皇權委員會】變質了，首席皇帝成了唯一的皇帝。

副總理張高麗站在總理李克強的頭上，以後李克強怎麼玩？李克強會不會下臺？

目前的情況很怪。政爭內幕如何？

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