Ideal drivers of progress

What people saw from the National People's Congress annual session in Beijing in the first couple of weeks of March was clearly a picture of transition, as a perfect reflection of China's transitional economy.

If transition is defined as a process that starts from the past and drives through the present to reach the future, then one could discern all of that from what recently transpired at the Great Hall of the People. When Premier Li Keqiang was talking about "mass innovation" - or a society flourishing with thousands, if not millions, of small companies driven by digitally powered leading technologies - he represented a country that is not today's China, but the vision of his colleagues at the top level.

In sharp contrast, officials from some provinces that are behind the rest of the country in economic growth (and in public services) continued to raise their hackneyed appeal - heard by China observers in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s - for bailout money from the central government for their mining companies (which are apparently running out of resources), for their workers stuck in low-paid jobs, and for their cities that are saddled with dilapidated public services. They are, as it were, the shadow of a China that is fading from public memory.