The interesting thing is that he hasn't been punished. It's said that this is because there are actually enough reformists inside the party with enough influence to protect him. Obviously, not all Communist Party members in China are of the same mindset. And this reality promises interesting times to come. Expect change.THE most prominent dissident still living in China has attacked the Communist party’s economic reforms and compared Deng Xiaoping, its late leader, to Louis XIV.
His essays are the second public challenge to the leadership after the appearance of Charter 08, a manifesto for political change that has been signed by more than 7,000 prominent citizens.
The essayist is Bao Tong, 76, who was the highest-ranking official imprisoned after the 1989 crackdown on China’s democracy movement. He served a seven-year sentence and now lives under house arrest in Beijing.
The essays contain devastating language. They will agitate China’s leaders because of Bao’s status as a veteran comrade speaking out while thousands of workers lose their jobs as a result of the world recession. The essays appeared as the party was celebrating 30 years of the “reform and opening-up” policy instituted by Deng, who died in 1997.
The way I see it, from what I've seen going on in China lately, not via the Big Media, but rather via various non-Big-Media sources, I can see massive, earthshaking changes in the offing for China. Surely it cannot remain static under the iron fist of such an infinitely-fatally-flawed Party, which cannot control everything.
