The country's current attitudes towards ethnic identity suggest
it won't be anytime soon. Ethno-cultural diversity has been a
mainstay of U.S. politics since the 1960s, with this election
cycle featuring perhaps the most diverse slate of candidates. On
Tuesday, Barack Obama became the first two-term African-American
president, while his challenger Mitt Romney came close to
shattering an equally unthinkable barrier by becoming America's
first Mormon head of state. Over half of current members of the
U.S. Congress self-identify with some sort of non-White, non-
Protestant category. Not surprisingly, American politics is a
heterogeneous affair, reflecting the increasingly complex
demographic mix of the American melting pot as well as the
maturity of its democracy. In China, however, diversity remains
something for the museum or the frontier, rather than the halls
of power at the Zhongnanhai leadership compound in Beijing. When
the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) announces its new leaders at
the 18th Party Congress