Even the Chinese aren’t buying the ‘Chinese model’

It’s immensely difficult to manage such a huge and complex country as China, we are constantly told by its mandarins. Indeed it is. Tens of thousands of Hong Kongers took to the streets over the weekend to protest their new leader, the Chinese Communist Party-friendly Leung Chun-ying. There have been demonstrations annually on 1 July to mark the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from Britain, but Sunday’s was the biggest in years. The numbers of protestors range from 65,000 to 400,000 depending on whether you ask the police or the demo organisers. They’re unhappy about everything from corruption to pollution to the widening income gap to a construction scandal surrounding Leung. The Beijing authorities have responded with their usual mixture of bravado (a visiting Hu Jintao attended an ostentatious military parade) and bribery (offering a handful of economic sweeteners). 

The blended response is interesting, because – as Jonathan Fenby said in his brilliant Spectator cover story – the CCP quite simply doesn’t know what to do.