Now that Xi Jinping officially holds the reins in Beijing, the world is asking this question: Can China's new leader revamp an economy that may become the world's largest during his 10-year term? Here's an even better one: Will Beijing let him?
Much is being made of how quickly Xi is replacing Hu Jintao in China's fastest formal transfer of power in more than a generation. Although it took Hu almost two years to get all three top positions — president, Communist Party head and chairman of the military commission — Xi has them right out of the gate. The sense is Xi has been empowered to rebalance an economy that's producing a dangerous gap between rich and poor.
That would sound more plausible if not for China's billionaire bubble. The real big money in China isn't in the private sector, but the public one. A March 7 Bloomberg story dramatized the point: The ranks of the ultra-wealthy in the legislature swelled 20 percent this year. The list of China's 1,000 richest people published by the Shanghai-based Hurun Report contains 90 members of the National People's Congress. That, Bloomberg calculates, is up from 75 in 2012. It's worth noting that everyone on the Hurun list had a fortune of at least 1.8 billion yuan ($289.4 million), more than former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.