Not surprisingly, there’s been a torrent of articles on Jiang’s resignation and Hu’s ascension over the past few days, but this one by supreme China Hand Ross Terrill is one of the few I’ve found that avoids the usual clichees (“Hu is an enigmatic man…”) and offers at least a modicum of substance.

Terrillo doesn’t say it in so many words, but I don’t think he’s expecting any dramatic reforms or changes from Hu anytime soon, if ever. Instead, he sees Hu as enjoying the “tranquillity of timidity,” where things are peaceful everyone knows huge problems continue to boil right below the surface.

Hu sincerely believes the main danger is instability. But it may really be political stagnation, as the economy and society leap ahead. The communist engineers seem unable to do more than tinker with great challenges. The big banks need to become commercial institutions instead of fingers on the hand of the party-state.

The talks, leading to more talks, on the North Korea crisis that China is orchestrating are no solution to a grave problem that could eventually leave Beijing facing Japan as a military giant. Peripheral parts of the Chinese empire, whether outside Beijing’s rule like Taiwan or inside it like Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Tibet, won’t stop wanting a say in their future just because Beijing chants its dogma of “One China”.

Before long, extensive political change will hit Beijing, but it’s unlikely to come simply as a result of Hu taking over from Jiang. Does stability come from periodic oiling of the top political machinery plus law and order policies directed at the populace below? Or from safety valves of debate at the top and electoral politics, however cacophonous, feeding in from below? History says the latter. Democracies such as Australia and the US go on for centuries with only incremental constitutional change. Very few modern authoritarian regimes have lasted long.

The unity of timidity is better than chaos, certainly, but it merely postpones fundamental issues as did the Brezhnev era in Moscow. It is not a substitute for updating an anachronistic political system to match a booming economic system.

If you are a junkie for Chinese political news, you’ll want to read this.