1. Reforms since the 1980s have been successful in imporving the Chinese economy at all levels.
True-ish. While there is no question China is revving up faster and faster, it is also true that the countryside is decaying terribly. In the past ten years thousands of businesses (chiefly based in villages and small towns) were privatized, and they quickly ran out of business due to competition from the cities. Hundreds of millions of pesants have been thus thrown out of work and now roam the nation in search of jobs. According to the Economist more than half of remaining state enterprises are money-losers and only exist to prevent anarchy.
To add to those troubles many farmers are finding it tough to survive, now that cheap US agriculture produce can enter the country more freely. The currency revaluations of 2005 simply didn't help. Before the reforms, Mao's regime had an "iron rice bowl" policy. Now that is all gone and millions are caught grappling the meaning of free market.
If that actually occurs, it should be around 2015. One reason why they are reluctant to change is because many Party bureaucrats were educated in Moscow (thus holding on to political beliefs). By around 2015 they will have retired and a new generation of bureaucrats (most of whom will have studied in western nations) takes over with new ideas.
Don't know about this.
If anything, it is very significant. Henry Kissinger once said that, "if you treat the Chinese as your enemy, they will become your enemy". Nationalism is extremely important, since the Chinese are not known to roll out the red carpet to invadors. More recently, the regime is using patriotism to distract from domestic concerns. When relations with Japan came to a head last year (Koizumi visiting the Tokyo war crime shrine, disputes over territory), the state media conveniently appealed to nationalism.
