China's Communists want unattainable goal of affluence without freedom

A joint report last year by the World Bank and China's Development Research Centre - brain trust of premier Li - warned that failure to ditch the old model would leave China languishing in the middle income trap, failing to join Japan, Korea, Taiwan and a rare vanguard of countries that have made it into the elite league and achieved vastly higher incomes per capita.

"The forces supporting China's continued rapid progress are gradually fading. The government's dominance in key sectors, while earlier an advantage, is in the future likely to act as a constraint on creativity.''

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The only way for China to break out of this impasse is with a blast of Sino-Thatcherism and a sledgehammer blow to the Party apparatus that lives off the deformed structure. That is not on offer at the Third Plenum. Xi Jinping wants affluent Leninism, on his own terms. No such thing exists.