I would like to draw attention to an interview “Why Beijing’s Troubles Could Get a Lot of Worse” that came out in December 2014.
Anne Stevenson-Yang has lived in China since 1985. She provides a convincing statement of her assessment of the economic and political situation in China, from the perspective of a macro-economist. Her views tend to converge with those of David Shambaugh. Here is a quotation from the part of the interview that deals with Mr. Xi’s anti-corruption campaign:
“As for Xi’s much-ballyhooed anticorruption campaign inside China, it offends me that international media depict it as a good-governance effort. What’s really going on is an old-style party purge reminiscent of the 1950s and 1960s with quota-driven arrests, summary trials, mysterious disappearances, and suicides, which has already entrapped, by our calculations, 100,000 party operatives and others. The intent is not moral purification by the Xi administration but instead the elimination of political enemies and other claimants to the economy’s spoils.”
Leihua Weng <leihua.weng@gmail.com>