- •Text 1.
- •Obama strong in battleground states
- •'You have made me a better president'
- •Success despite economic woes
- •It was a more measured victory than four years ago, when Obama claimed 365 electoral votes to McCain's 173, winning with 53 percent of the popular vote.
- •Breaking down the campaigns
- •Looking ahead
- •In an election offering sharply different views on the role of government, voters ultimately narrowly tilted toward Obama's approach.
- •Text 2. Analysis: Slivers of hope in economic recovery helped boost Obama
- •In the end there are no silver bullets, but a lot to consider in the upcoming days, about what Obama did right, and where Romney went wrong, he added.
- •Text 3. Gridlock as usual or new era of compromise? Washington stares down 'fiscal cliff' crisis after election
- •In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid said Wednesday that "we need to start working together, a lot. Gridlock is not the solution."
- •Text 4. As China enters new era, how much of Mao will stay? (Reuters, Nov 6 2012)
- •Incremental steps
- •In 2002, the charter was amended to allow entrepreneurs into the party and assert that the party represents the interests of all Chinese people, not just workers and peasants.
- •A question of capital
A question of capital
In China, one reform often requires another. Get banks to allocate credit properly and they might need a bailout when debts go bad. Strengthen the legal system and it might compromise the supremacy of the party. Urbanisation is a major driver of sustainable growth, but growth in city-dwellers puts pressure on local government budgets. No single problem has a single solution.
That may be why President Hu Jintao’s outgoing government, which presided over impressive growth and stability for ten years, has achieved little lasting reform. Anachronisms like the one-child policy, and the “hukou” identity card system, which traps economic migrants in low-paid labour rather than comfortable consumerism, have yet to be swept away.
Xi might be different. What matters isn’t just whether he wants reform, but whether he can amass the political credibility to overcome opposition. That will take time to build up. Xi will have two former presidents, Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin, and other party seniors looking over his shoulder. Consolidating his power will take many months, at best.
The best hope is that Xi is less like Hu, and more like Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese leader most associated with successful reforms. When early opening up led to widespread corruption, Deng forged ahead anyway, remarking that “when you open the door, flies will get in”. Then, as now, the best tools for economic reform in China are a way with words, and a hard head.