A renowned soloist in ancient Chinese music died suddenly last winter. I hustled to Beijing as fast as I could for the funeral and cremation at which many distinguished figures appeared, above all from the arts. After the brief service, shooed from the small memorial chamber, a group of us adjourned to a private place. Our beloved friend had fulfilled much of her destiny, through performances, recordings, teaching, and so forth. But China remained to preoccupy us even in the midst of loss.

I was approached by someone I had never met but who knew of me. He was a true genius—I do not use the word lightly—and a brain-truster for the central government. Dispensing with all preliminaries, he directly posed to me the question: “What do we do? We all know that the system does not work, that we are caught in a sihutong (dead end). But we don’t know what first step to take. If we place our foot incorrectly, we could begin a disaster, violence and civil war.”

These were not sentiments, nor was his a question, one would ever hear in a gathering of American China specialists. We assume that China will simply continue on track indefinitely.

My response was as upbeat as I could make it: “Think of Taiwan, long a dictatorship. On July 15, 1987, martial law had been lifted by Chiang Ching-kuo, the son and successor of Chiang Kai-shek.”