That was just the tip of an immense iceberg, says Richard McGregor, the former Beijing bureau chief for the Financial Times. "Everything
and everybody got a cut, but it got out of control," he adds. "It was becoming more like Suharto's Indonesia, where it was corroding the foundations of the system." China was getting richer faster than any other country in history. But that unleashed other forces.
irannews.ru "He believes that in the world of hyper-competitive capitalism and a hyper-competitive arms race
with the
United
States, the only plausible way that China can remain competitive is to remain under one party that happens to be called the Communist Party." Everybody is a bit nervous about going to the front, he says. "Your heart beats differently at times. But we signed up for this. We gave a pledge. Xi was a princeling - the son of one of Mao's lieutenants, Xi Zhongxun, who had been purged and later rehabilitated. Colleagues described the younger Xi as humble, self-disciplined and hardworking but otherwise unremarkable. Even on the eve of his elevation to
general secretary of the Communist Party there was little hint of what was to come. It was at this time - during a trade war between China and the EU over textile quotas - that I got a rare invitation to interview the commerce minister. Such interviews
with top Chinese officials were excruciatingly dull, but this was the opposite.
