Comment to a Friend with Regard to His Upcoming Book on Hu Jintao in Government

We always keep hoping the younger generation of Chinese Communists will be less conservative. Many people assumed that Hu Jintao was ingratiating himself to all those old cadres for all those years to get them favourably disposd to him so he could realize his plan of becoming President, but then once he got into power it would turn out that he has a secret agenda to liberalize China. It seems that we tend to project our own values on these people (including Zhao Ziyang, even Qiao Shi). So far we end up disappointed. But as you say there are always surprises. My record of anticipating those has been pretty weak over the past more than 30 years!