Jake's View | Xi Jinping fluffs lines in sticking to FTZ script

Addressing the Communist Party's leading group for overall reform, [President] Xi said lessons learned after more than a year of operating the FTZ (free trade zone) in Shanghai could be applied to other areas, Xinhua reported.

"We should plant these seeds in more land so that flowers will blossom and fruits will be harvested as quickly as possible," he said.

I always thought it was Mr Xi's predecessor, President Hu Jintao, who conceived it his mission in life to remain on script no matter how great the embarrassment.

Here, however, we have Mr Xi acting as though he were still party boss of Ningde in Fujian province, jollying the farmers into working longer hours to meet the harvest quota and then immediately writing the visit up as a success. It is what the rule book prescribes. It is what Mr Hu would do.

But it all looks rather silly on the international stage when the Shanghai FTZ has clearly proven a dud. The key was to have been financial reform, starting with a freely exchangeable yuan within the zone.

One year later, however, this FTZ's boosters on that notable self-praise forum, Wikipedia, still start the list of its virtues with an assurance that video game consoles will be allowed, after case by case approval of course, and too bad if internet access remains denied.