The square is surrounded by unfeasibly wide avenues and intimidating monolithic buildings; the savage sun beats down and scours the vast desert of concrete paving slabs; PLA soldiers strut and stroll and stand guard, watched over by the avuncular image of Chairman Mao. Tiananmen Square is a hostile, unforgiving, faintly depressing place. It was designed by Mao to proclaim the greatness of the Communist Party and its immense scale seems intended to crush the individual human soul. To stand at the heart of Communist China, amongst the ghosts of the butchered democracy movement, it is hard to envisage the flower of democracy taking root in such harsh and brutal surroundings. But Tiananmen Square is not China; it is protected by a small army of soldiers, police and secret service agents that sometimes seem to outnumber the tourists. Yet they stand powerless and bemused as a rival army of foreign tourists pass under Mao’s image and stream into the Forbidden City. There is something sweetly satisfying in watching the legions of garishly dressed, camera toting tourists pass under Mao’s gaze. They represent the failure of his ideology and the end of his grip on Chinese society. It’s as if his spirit is forced to watch as hordes of foreign tourists and nouveau riche Chinese parade past and flaunt the victory of capitalism over Maoism. And perhaps that image sums up China as a whole, the Communist Party continues to maintain its iron grip on power as slowly but surely the country is forced to open up, develop and modernise.

My trip to China was framed by the tragic events in Sichuan Province. The earthquake caused a hundred thousand individual tragedies but for a westerner it was particularly galling to see the regime so obviously and egregiously use the disaster for its own ends. Despite being a developing country many buses and trains in China have LCD televisions installed; the regime is guaranteed a captive audience for its pre-approved news items. The Chinese coverage made no mention of foreign aid or the corruption that caused many state schools to collapse and entomb their pupils while neighbouring buildings survived. No, the regime’s reportage consisted of images of Hu Jintao studiously looking at maps of the disaster zone and waving his arms in an authoritative manner as well as heroic PLA soldiers saving the lives of their fellow countrymen, building tent cities and parachuting out of aeroplanes. It was all packaged into a montage of moving images, sound tracked by stirring and patriotic music. The Sichuan earthquake shows how the Communist Party now sees itself; it is no longer Communist, nor even particularly ideological; instead it now derives its legitimacy as the guardian of the economy and protector of the people. Effectively it’s only hope is to pass itself off as its ideological arch-nemesis, a Confucian oligarchy.

On the way to the Terracotta Army I chatted to a group of idealistic American student teachers. They recalled how had tried to convince their young Chinese guide of the benefits of democracy, without any success. I myself spoke to a young Chinese gentleman who seemed baffled and hurt by the protests over the Olympic torch. For the Chinese people democracy is not their first priority. They are a fast developing country and they trust the Communist Party to steer them through their Industrial Revolution. The regime’s main goal is to keep itself in power but it cannot be denied that it does also have some benevolent tendencies. I strongly believe in the spread of liberal democracy and universal values, but China is not ready, yet, the implementation of democracy tomorrow would be a recipe for chaos and disorder, yet when I look at China I believe that it will be democratic within the next one hundred years. The Chinese may be the world’s most natural capitalists and once they have been given some elemental freedoms they will only start to demand more over time. Our own history teaches us that the richer citizens become, the more freedoms they demand.

The inequality of Chinese society is embarrassingly obvious; one can see old men foraging through litter bins outside marble fronted Gucci shops. At one restaurant an elderly Chinese lady scavenged the remains of my pizza, almost before I had left the table. To reconcile the huge inequalities in wealth and to maintain the breakneck economic growth is an enormous challenge, and one that may ultimately prove too much for the Communist Party. Furthermore the Chinese people are emphatically pro-Western and city dwellers have already adopted Western fashions and lifestyles. So too will they adopt Western values and beliefs whilst maintaining their own culture and traditions. The only question is how long it will take.