The Chinese believe that [former Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev made a critical, indeed fatal error by tending to assume that economic freedom involves political freedom as well. |
There's a three-way struggle or contest going on with the Central Asian republics, involving Russia, China, and the United States. Beijing is pursuing a very active diplomacy at the moment, [not only] in Central Asia [but in] the South Pacific, Latin America, Africa, which it can afford to do because of its enormous economic gravitational pull. |
They have shown that it's perfectly possible to manage a very open economy with an authoritarian single-party structure. |