Cheng Li

Historically, you haven’t seen the [Chinese] public use social media to comment on leaders… [But now] people are talking about politics.

The growing political transparency and open ideological disputes are healthy developments in China’s governance. Despite the fact that it is still a one-party Leninist state, the CCP leadership is by no means a monolithic group whose members all share the same ideology and policy preferences, and it is also divided along factional, coalitional, and regional lines. But one can also assume that internal ideological disagreements and political infighting in the top leadership may become too divisive to reconcile, making the decision-making process lengthier and more complicated, and perhaps even resulting in deadlock.

China’s domestic situation is very bad. The reality is that the Chinese economy is in a very, very difficult situation.