In assessing the outcome of the Third Plenum, what observers should really be looking for is evidence of a bold strategy for political reform. If Xi and his colleagues produce no credible sign of such a commitment, everything else will be eyewash and skepticism about China s fate under their leadership eventually will be vindicated.

But it is difficult to know how deep that adjustment has gone. If the West is perceived to be attempting to maintain the leadership it snatched 200 years ago by industrializing first, thereby denying the post Confucians the fruits of their dynamism permanently, the Chinese, in particular, will conclude that pluralism is eyewash and that the West s worldview in fact replicates their traditional one.