Simply more evidence to refute the idea that China is going to go western anytime soon. It's still under an iron grip, and anyone thinking otherwise simply doesn't have a grip on reality, or has a vested business interest in the status quo in China.
The Chincoms realise that to attempt to maintain the Mao-style of state socialism leads to revolt well sooner than later.
Hence, plan B; allow parts of the economy to pretend to be capitalist(ish), while still running the old state industries at a huge loss, and make the faux-capitalist sector of the economy pay for the privilege.
Ah, but the ChinComs missed something here, now didn't they? What happens when X hundred million peasants hear about all this wealth (''It is glorious to be rich'' -- Deng Xiao Ping, chairman of the Party, right?) and try to move to the cities where the wealth is created...and can't.
No place to live, no job they can do.
Don't waste any nukes on China. The citizens will, in dribs and drabs OR all at once, one day, do the job of neutering the ChinCom philosophy w/o incurring an enormous number of deaths.
'Chasing the Dragon' is the common and traditional euphemism for smoking opium. I would suggest that that phrase also is apropos to the hilariously and inevitably doomed policy of 'one nation, two systems'
Could've said the same thing about the Colonies in 1773. At the time, the Colonists were under the "iron-grip" of the British Continental Army. Other European nations scoffed at the notion that our silly tea parties and tax revolts were going to change matters anytime soon.
The glass is half full, not half empty. Change is a process, not an event. The process is occuring. The positive change will continue.
As Patton said "do not take counsel of your fears."
It could mean just the opposite. These incidents sound a lot like what was happening in Eastern Europe in the 1980s and we know that ended in very rapid change.
"Simply more evidence to refute the idea that China is going to go western anytime soon."
That was just propaganda to get us to swallow the "free trade with China" pill.