At the end of the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese economy was in a shambles. Today, China is the second largest economy in the world. Most of the credit for that should go to the Chinese people, whose resilience and ingenuity never cease to amaze me, but the government is entitled to a large slice of it, too.
The success of the government has undoubtedly won it a large supply of goodwill from people who can remember the bad times. The fact is, however, that a large and growing segment of the population has no memory of those years. They have known nothing but growing prosperity, and they will expect no less in the future.
What will happen if the government stumbles in the future? All of the many fault lines in Chinese society will be exposed. It could be a rough ride.