Policy dead ends in China and the US will spawn greater public discontent

Both China and the US seem determined to pursue policy dead ends, driven by reaction to events rather than long-term thinking.

First, let us step aside for a moment from the specifics of the Hong Kong constitutional issue and look at the confusion which appears to be in the mind of leaders in Beijing as to what sort of system and society they are trying to advance on the mainland.

The very day that protests began in Hong Kong, it was reported that President Xi Jinping was urging a return to the "spirit" of Mao Zedong to enable a united party to deliver an even greater and more prosperous China. What does this mean? Is it just a sop to the leftists who still lurk in the party? Or does it imply support for continued class warfare, and, if so, who are now the class enemies? Or does it imply a preference for the singular leadership of the party, as practised by the likes of Mao and Stalin rather than the collective leadership style of, for example, Jiang Zemin's era, when a hundred flowers really did bloom in China?

Is the anti-corruption campaign a way of cleansing both party and state to enable more space for the private sector? Or is it really a leftist throwback with rhetoric similar to that of the now disgraced Bo Xilai ?

Not helping answer these questions was a subsequent reference by Xi to the importance of Confucius, the very idealist seen by Mao as the embodiment of hierarchy and a feudal society. For sure, Confucian ideas have a foundation in ethical behaviour, and are suitably secular. Buddhism, which has been as influential as Confucianism in the propagation of ethical ideas in China, did not get a mention.

Is its problem that the Buddha, unlike Confucius, a near contemporary, was not Chinese? Or is it just that order and hierarchy are now the overriding need? Strengthening the power of the party may sustain order, but how can the private sector now lead China's economy?

Further muddying the waters, just before the Hong Kong protests began, Xi was giving face to a group of the richest people in Hong Kong, using them to criticise the pro-democracy movement. Does it not matter to the president that many of these inherited their vast wealth, and that, in most cases, that wealth was accumulated through land and property at the expense of small business and households? For Mao, oppressive landlords were the target for revolutionary execution. Other Hong Kong fortunes came from gambling, a vice condemned by both Mao and Confucius, and now also a means of capital flight and money laundering for mainlanders.