CHINA: Fissures in the Facade. “The anger on social media was also indicative of new insecurity among members of China’s middle class, who have never experienced an economic downturn and have always thought they had more protections than lower-paid migrant workers. People said they could see themselves in Mr. Li.” Plus:

The most subversive, explosive message you tell the Chinese people is something different. It goes like this:

The Party is a racket. The guys at the top are not any different from the ones you deal with at the bottom. The Party exists to make sure their kids have a spot at the front of the line no matter how much more your kids deserve it. You are not forced to call Xi all these fancy titles because it will help him restore China to its ancestral glory: you are forced to do all of that so Xi Jinping’s daughter gets into Harvard and his family racks up homes in Hong Kong. All of the taxes, the censorship, the ridiculous rules and regulations, the blustering about war, the hero-worship and the propaganda, the detention centers and the cameras—it is all a racket. You live a slave so that someone else’s children can get ahead.

That is the fissure in the facade. It is whispered of. It is wondered at. Sooner or later, it will explode.

Well, that’s because it’s the truth. Though the anxieties of the middle class vs. the professional class in China sound awfully familiar. . .