Party time!

According to Audra Ang, writing for the Associated Press, women remain second-tier choices for filling Chinese Communist Party posts. They're classified with ethnic minorities, intellectuals, and youths as groups for whom quotas have been established for lower-level positions. Moreover, many Chinese think women who aspire to high positions are ruthless in the tradition of Ci Xi, the ambitious "Dowager Empress" of the late Qing Dynasty. But nowhere does she mention that the party is undemocratic.

A couple of days ago, an article in the NYT was labelled China's Communist Party Opens Its Doors to Capitalists, but the idea that the association with the rich could worsen already rampant corruption is hardly mentioned. Ditto in this Reuters piece.

On the other hand, according to Erik Eckholm at the NYT, the Chinese Communist Party is increasingly irrelevant to urbanite's daily lives; meanwhile, in rural areas, disaffection with party corruption is widespread.