The Biggest Threat to the Chinese Dream?

The Chinese government’s decision to evict tens of thousands of people in Beijing following a fire last month in a settlement for migrant workers has underscored the two Chinas challenge President Xi Jinping faces, suggests Andrew Browne in the Wall Street Journal. “Behind Mr. Xi’s confident narrative about his country’s emergence as a global superpower at the recent 19th Communist Party Congress is a more fragile reality.”

“A popular revolt isn’t in the cards. The migrants themselves, dazed and fearful, have mostly submitted to their fate. They have few means to organize. Many simply melted back to their villages.

“Still, the plight of tens of thousands of refugees, dragging their wheeled suitcases through rubble in subzero temperatures, struck a chord among Beijing’s middle classes,” Browne writes.

“A deep cleavage between privileged urban dwellers and the rural poor who serve them could limit the country’s economic prospects for decades to come. Half the country pursues Mr. Xi’s ‘China Dream’ of wealth and power; the other half—the ones still picking their way through Beijing’s blitzed slums—could derail it.

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