Partying on

After the party, one must pick up the gifts and the pieces and get on with quotidian life. China wouldn’t, or couldn’t, waste time getting back to business as usual once its great coming out party of the Olympics was over. True, one might just ask if the state or the Party indeed needs a breather to change trains. The suspended death sentence handed down to the former vice mayor of Beijing, Liu Zhihua — who had been in charge of constructing Olympic venues and the infrastructural upgrade of Beijing till June 2006 and is accused of corruption — is proof that China takes the execution of state business very seriously indeed. Liu is accused of pocketing about $1.02 million in bribes, abusing his power over contracts, loans and promotions. If true, he would be guilty in any democratic polity. But the Party must go all the way. A sense of proportion is not among its strengths.

The controversial build-up to the Olympics will remain in public memory for a while, as will whatever’s followed — the explosion of the melamine-milk contamination scandal; the outbreak of hand, foot and mouth disease in eastern China; the veiled message to Muslim government officials and Party members to refrain from religious practice in the troubled Xinjiang area.

China’s success story finds itself compromised every time because of the state’s systemic schizophrenia. A free market doesn’t gel with political and civic shackles, especially with a lack of transparency. Corruption threatens every government. But only a one-party system would be ever nervous and ever ruthless about it, and yet be unable to prevent deliberate addition of melamine to milk.