China

Charlie Rose interview excerpt

Good points

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong: The View from Singapore - BusinessWeek:

"How is the upcoming generation of Chinese leaders different from those they succeeded?

The current generation of leaders experienced a cultural revolution. They know what a mess China can be if it is mismanaged and how important it is for China to grow and improve the lives of its people. The next, or maybe the next-next group of leaders will be post-cultural-revolution. They will have grown up in 30 years of reform and opening up. They will have lived in a China that is connected through the Internet with people who are much better informed about what's going on in the world. And they will have to run this whole system not as a central system but with a market economy and a coherent political framework on top of that. I think they will have a big challenge.

What worries Chinese leaders?
Instability.

They've seen Tiananmen, and they saw the Falun Gong.

[Members of the Falun Gong] appeared as a flash mob one day in front of the inner sanctum. That was the first [the leadership] ever heard of Falun Gong, and it scared the daylights out of them. And when they discovered who was in the Falun Gong and how many senior officials had joined this secret group, they were really shaken."