Michael Pettis

China: Can the RMB Be More Undervalued Today than It Was Last Year?

Sober Realist, in that light I do agree with your comments. For exmaple one of the problems we are seeing here of is that without a better system of enforcing concerns of ordinary households onto the government some of the necessary reforms, including for example liberalizing the banking system so that households aren't so heavily taxed via low deposit rates, are unlikely to happen as long as there are powerful consituencies that benefit from the existing sysytem.

As for your question, much of John Lee's information is (or was) publicly available. The data on the number of incidents of "mass unrest" for example, although probably understated, used to be released by one of the ministries annually until 2005, when the release was discontinued for reasons never explained.