Amid uncertainties over whether China's combination of
authoritarian one-party rule and a rapidly evolving economy can
persist, an academic at the Beijing Institute of Technology
notes that many Chinese intellectuals wonder whether 70 years is
about as long as any single party can remain in power. The
wondering comes from looking at the examples of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union and Mexico's Institutional
Revolutionary Party. Uninterrupted rule by the Chinese Communist
Party will hit the 70-year mark in 2019. There certainly is an
unresolved tension between China's authoritarian politics and
the vibrant entrepreneurial economics that Deng Xiaoping
launched more than three decades ago. The tension mainly has to
do with free market economics creating independent centers of
power, and power inevitably having political implications. Maybe
70 years really is about as long as anyone can finesse a way
through such contradictions. Longevity per se is probably not
the critical factor in bringing one-party rul