"So long as people criticise the weather, the government can weather the criticism". So commented the Economist, 7th February 2008, asking whether China’s leaders, having weathered the transport and power outage chaos of the Chinese New Year winter storms, are pondering the lessons offered and will make good on their earnest promises to do better in future.
Faced with an ever yawning gap between the "haves" and the "have nots", inflationary pressures that are seeing prices rising faster than incomes, growing rural unrest, huge enviromental concerns, the first single digit growth forecast for six years, a US economy facing an alarming downturn, such that everyone is looking to China to step forward and prevent the world from slipping into recession, and an Olympics in August that will focus attention on China as never before, Caution will be the watchword for the Year of the Rat….
.. for how long can the government weather the criticism?
