Gradually, a compelling idea emerges: Now that the Communist Party has embraced crony capitalism, Gifford explains, it has become just the latest dynastic iteration in the great cycle of Chinese history, every bit as autocratic, venal and corrupt as the Qing, Tang and Qin emperors and empresses. And when do Chinese dynasties fall? Not when the urban intelligentsia is restless, as was the case in the 1980s before the massacre at Tiananmen Square, but when the rural peasant class finally rises up, he concludes.
