Words cannot describe how happy I am to not be in Beijing or China during this testy Party Congress period. It's lovely right now to have fast speeds, streaming video, no censorship of search results, everything Google-related works, no need to turn on VPN, etc. etc. I could get used to this! Sympathy for the rest of you.

But I do think this Party Congress and changeover is much worse than the paranoia around the last one when we changed from Jiang to Hu. I just don't recall it being this bad. Then again, back then there wasn't the exposure of internal political struggles nor the unveiling of Politburo family wealth as there has been this year. And Tibet and Xinjiang were a bit quieter and less restive back then.