Simon Elegant at Time Magazine’s China Blog (h/t Robert Amsterdam) thinks that Russia’s recent elections, in which Putin protégé Dmitry Medvedev won a landslide (and well-choreographed) victory, may provide China with a working model for “managed democracy”:
Anyone who is wondering what the future holds for China might take a close look at what happened in Russia over the weekend …
… There are two critical factors in achieving a “managed democracy:” of the sort that appears to be evolving in Russia, it seems to me. Intimidating or co-opting the opposition so there is little real alternative to your candidate is one. But the other is the acquiescence of a large chunk of the population. People in Russia wanted (and apparently still want) stability after the upheavals of the Yeltsin era. People in China want to keep riding the economic boom as long as they can, which is the reason that if there were elections next week, the Communist Party would likely get the nod, particularly if they followed rule number one (emasculating the opposition). The question then, of course, is what happens if they good times come to an end, as they eventually must.
