"The leaders fail to understand that the fakery casts genuine achievements into doubt, and their clumsy cover-ups bring only greater dishonour," says Li Datong of the control-obsession that Chinese leadership has demonstrated during the Olympics. But when will they regain the maturity to understand that it is a strength, not a weakness, to allow genuine criticism and opposition?
As we see also in Paul Rogers' comments about Russia, and Anthony Barnett's follow-up comments on Iran: a show of strength is a proof of vulnerability. Li Datong reminds us that this wisdom was part of the pre-Tiananmen awareness of the leadership: "The late politicians Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang once openly said "we must get used to governing while the public oppose and demonstrate", and "we must learn to govern despite small or medium-scale disorder." Unfortunately this vision and psychological readiness was brought to an end by the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989 and has not yet returned. "
