(September 10, 2002) ‘How China’s ruling Communist Party manages the environmental, social, economic and political tensions converging on such places as Tiger Leaping Gorge … will be the most important story determining China’s near-term political stability.’

(excerpt)

Tiger Leaping Gorge, China: My friend Nayan Chanda, the editor of YaleGlobal magazine and a longtime reporter in Asia, recently shared with me a conversation he’d had with an Asian diplomat regarding India and China: India, he said, always looks as if it is boiling on the surface, but underneath it is very stable because of a 50-year-old democratic foundation. China looks very stable on the surface, but underneath it is actually boiling — an overheated economy under a tightly sealed political lid. There is a lot to that, but what’s most interesting is where China is boiling today. Ever since the student uprising in 1989, we in America have tended to look at China through the prism of Tiananmen, thinking that the main drama there is a struggle pitting freedom-seeking students and intellectuals against a hard-line Communist Party. There is still truth in that perspective, but it is not the most revealing lens through which to look at China anymore. A lot of those Tiananmen students have gotten M.B.A.’s, dropped out of politics and gone to work for multinationals.

The New York Times, September 10, 2002