President and Communist Party leader Hu Jintao has once again outlined his vision for China's future: You say you want a revolu-shuh-hunn... but nothing too dramatic, mind you.

No, no, wait, sorry. He said: Insist on the party’s leadership, governance by the people and ruling the nation by laws. The "by the people" part is not to be mistaken for Western-style democracy. It's something else.

Something profitable, but not exactly free. (One of the interesting things about Chinese political ideology is that whatever the system is right now, it's not meant to keep going - not like America's constitutional democracy is meant to keep adapting to whatever comes along. No, the socialism-with-Chinese-characteristics is designed to be replaced by the next step that devolves more power to the proletariat. It's just never exactly the right time to start.)

As the government is charting its course for the future, it's got some rough spots on the road immediately ahead - and a problem with its tires. This isn't metaphorical. Oh, dear. 450,000 seems like a lot of radials to be recalling.

That can't be good for business. And 180 seems like a lot of food plants to be closing down.

And, well, I can't even tally this properly. But it's a lot of embezzling and bribery.

Dear, dear, dear. There really is a lot of money floating around there. At least, I suppose, they're not hiding stacks of it in their refrigerators.

Sometimes, you know, I wonder if by simply repeating some of this stuff, I'm not part of the problem. Or part of a problem. A lot of what passes for news about China really seems to be rehashes of the same old fear-of-competitor that underlies a lot of image problems. And I wonder how much that public image of China (the country) comes around to knock on my kids, who are Chinese (the ethnicity) and American (the country).

But I absolutely can't help but watch and see what happens next.