FOREIGN POLICY: CHINESE COUP WATCHING.

Interesting note: Last night I was talking to a friend who was recently in China, who said that while Beijing looks fancy, the countryside is looking increasingly run-down. In particular, he noted villages where every available space was planted with corn. As he said, when you’re cramming three cornstalks in next to a telephone pole, that doesn’t suggest prosperity. The folks in the villages also looked kind of “hard-bit,” he said. When China turns over, it usually comes from the peasants. Not sure what that has to do with trouble at the top, except that if those folks get busy infighting it could either encourage the peasants to rise, or lead to one faction or another stirring them up for its own purposes. If that happens, it could get ugly.