Push and Shove

In the years since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, China's leaders have based their rule of the world's largest country on a single powerful idea: help people get rich, and they'll respect your authority. By and large, this formula has been a success. China's growing prosperity has won it an essentially docile populace and escalating prominence as a world power. Until recently, this strategy has also proved effective in underwriting Beijing's preferred interpretation of "one country, two systems," the nebulous concept that governs the mainland's relations with Hong Kong and Macau, and that it hopes some day to apply to...

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