Opinion | Why Vancouver housing is back in the cross hairs amid the new China risks
Wealthy mainlanders have new impetus to secure offshore havens following the Communist Party’s proposal to scrap presidential term limits
In Robert Caro’s sweeping biography of President Lyndon Johnson The Passage of Power, he keenly observes how power works: “Power doesn’t always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals. When you have enough power to do what you always wanted to do, then you see what the guy always wanted to do.”
That represents a singular understanding for any politician who is fearful to find himself powerless in his world in which power is the crucial commodity.
In a sharp rebuke to Deng Xiaoping’s constitutional statute of collective leadership, a proposal by the Communist Party to eliminate presidential term limits in China has awakened worries about the return of one man rule in China. The issue has been raised before, but even the most ardent mainland supporters were surprised when it actually occurred. The amount of defensive and convoluted rationalisation being generated sound flimsy: ensuring the continuity of the country’s internal policies and pursuing its growing international interests as a superpower- even if means weakening governing institutions.
Formal approval will create a thin line between China’s claim to be a one party technocratic state versus being run by a “paramount leader or great helmsman.” The world has not experience beneficial historical outcomes for the latter under Chinese, European or African cultures.
Yet in less than 40 years after Deng opened up China’s economy and instituted collective leadership here is the world’s most populous and one of its most prosperous countries returning to the governance model that it so desperately needed to escape from. That is why President Xi Jinping’s proposal represents a major shift in China’s political development that requires a revised risk assessment.
It is difficult to measure the risk without being cruelly objective and open minded. Avoid the narrative fallacy- fooling yourself with stories that cater to investors’ hope and thirst for clear patterns and dependable stories.
