The state-run media blacked out the leader’s trip, since he was supposed to live in retirement, but his pronouncements, judiciously leaked to journalists in Hong Kong, were beamed back across the border. The patriarch’s message was straightforward: there was nothing to fear from increased foreign investment and continued economic reform, since the ‘publicly owned sector is the mainstay of the economy.’ ‘More importantly,’ he added, ‘political power is in our hands,’ meaning that the party exercised political control over all foreign-owned companies, which would be made to serve the nation’s
...more
