First Quadruple, Then Double?

Under its current leader, Hu Jintao, the size of China's economy has quadrupled (in dollar terms) in the decade 2002-2012. Over the same period, it has moved from 5th to the biggest exporter in the world, ahead of the entire 27-nation European Union (2nd) and mighty Germany (3rd). It has displaced Japan as the world's 2nd largest economy. Some form of health care is now nearly universal in China, compared with 15% ten years ago, and even its rural poor are covered, however still modestly, by a pension scheme. China's global influence has surged, effectively just behind America's, whether it concerns climate change, or development in Africa, or even resource development in Western nations like Canada. New planning emerging from Beijing aims for a further doubling of the economy by 2020. And on it goes - seemingly relentlessly.

But, as with the apparently "unstoppable Japan" in the 1980's, extrapolation of current trends is often misleading, or just wrong. Here's the challenge for China - continued economic growth will more than ever depend on the government's ability to maintain political stability. The 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party will this week introduce its new leader, Xi Jinping, who next March will also assume the country's presidency. This is a once-every-ten-years (whether it's needed or not) leadership change, the result of a process that, to understate it, is opaque. Ordinary Chinese are richer, now protest in public, write critically, and comment through burgeoning social media, but have had no role at all in the selection. At some point, will public resentment - over inequality, environmental destruction, official corruption, or just no means of political input - explode?  Will one-party Communism in China finally go the way of its counterpart in Soviet Russia and Eastern Europe?

Economic history suggests that the process of economic maturity is often accompanied, sooner or later, by the emergence of democratic expression. Watch for this to happen again, this time in China.