Another Small Step On the Path To A Liberalized China?

Interesting news from Zhongguo:

Party leaders will no longer be greeted wherever they go with cheering crowds, banners, red carpets and elaborate flower displays, said a statement on Chinese state media after a meeting of the new 25-man Politburo.
The updated rules also ban dull, long speeches and fawning write-ups in the state newspapers, as the party tries to reshape its image.
…
Meanwhile, Mr Xi also pledged on Tuesday to implement the rule of law, in a speech that seemed aimed at criticism over government corruption, a lack of accountability and official brutality.

The enlightened commentariat will generally dismiss this as mere window dressing, but it may actually be somewhat profound. China is a society obsessed with status and the trappings of power, and to ask Communist officials to abase themselves before their countrymen is moderately revolutionary.

Of course, China’s still pretty far from free and open elections, but liberalization is not synonymous with democracy. In truth, democracy and liberty are nearly as often enemies as allies, as recent events in Egypt exemplify.  Rule of law would probably improve the state of liberty in China more than voting at the moment.

If China does continue to liberalize, there are some enormous implications for the long term that are only beginning to take form. As Glenn put it the other day, the primary reason we have governments is that they’re really good at killing people — and the bigger and more powerful the government, the better it is at killing. But as the need for killing (or at least the credible threat of such) subsides, independence movements may bloom amidst the fiscal collapse of the welfare states, driven by economics, culture, and the desire for self-determination, replacing “government at gunpoint” with a paradigm of competitive government like that Patri Friedman has talked about. From Quebec to Catalonia to Kurdistan to Texas to Tibet, the maps we draw in fifty years may look different in ways that seem nigh unimaginable today.