Two Things I Learned About the People's Republic of China . . .

. . . from an extremely interesting article about Deng Xiaoping by Fang Lizhi in November 10th New York Review of Books.

1. The Military

"It is not widely appreciated outside China that the Peoples's Liberation Army (PLA) is not a national army; it is a Party army . . . the PLA takes orders only from the Central Military Commission, which is a Party organ. When push comes to shove, as it did at Tiananmen in 1989, the PLA defends Party interests, not national interests." (Of course, the Party determines national interests in a one-Party state, but imagine the army not being for the service of the country except indirectly.)

2. The Household Registry

"Beginning in the 1980s, tens of milions of migrant workers from the countryside crowded Chinese cities to sell their labour in construction, sanitation, and other menial tasks. They were the bedrock that made Deng's "economic miracle" possible. But under the government's "household registry" system, they technically remained rural residents and were denied the rights of urban residents. Their children -- even children born in the cities -- also lacked urban registry and thus were not allowed to go to school." (Emphasis added)

Fang adds that the registry system was an invention of the occupying Japanese in WWII who wanted to control migration in order to "prevent the spread of popular resistance."