Change is not around the corner - it's here

Economics | Ed Zhang

All media, Chinese and international, are talking about China's next reform. But reform, since its very beginning in the country's impoverished rural grassroots in late 1978, is not a business that depends on the push of the government.

The big picture always is that the government's role is to respond to the rising demand from society, not the other way round. China won't be different. Many changes require the government to write national policies and standards for them to become widespread and institutionalized, but changes themselves happen outside the government.