Springtime is the season for predicting the imminent demise of the Communist party of China. It’s like pollen: just as spring brings allergens, so it brings China’s annual parliamentary sessions. And the west is so allergic to that display of putative parliamentarianism that some pundit always ends up predicting it will all end in tears.Authoritarianism with Chinese characteristics cannot endure, we are told; the endgame has begun.
Normally, being not much given to apocryphal prognostications of that sort, I just hold my breath and wait for the pollen, and the pundits, to go away. I would do that this year too, but for one small and seemingly insignificant fact highlighted by Premier Li Keqiang near the start of the weeklong meetings of top lawmakers and political advisers: the sheer volume of lavatory seats and rice cookers purchased by Chinese tourists to Japan during the just-ended lunar New Year holiday.
Premier Li was referring to Japanese television reports, widely circulated in China, that mainland tourists spent nearly $1bn in Japan over the holidays — and much of it went on the aforementioned sanitary ware and kitchen utensils.