Bo Jintao smiled. “We’ve given them a say. They have village committees now, they choose their own precinct councils…”

“Useless, pointless bodies. Placebos. Worse than that – insults to their intelligence. Mock democracy.”

“And why should they have more?” Bo Jintao asked, his hands rising in frustration. “A ‘billion flowers’, really? Has that worked so well for India, or is it more like a billion weeds? A country still crippled by corruption? That hasn’t conquered poverty almost halfway through the twenty-first century? Has it worked so well for the Americans? Where ‘voting’ means two sides in near-permanent paralysis? Or for Europe, still trying to decide if it’s one country or thirty, or thirty countries each splitting in half, and all the while sliding decade after decade into irrelevance?”

Bao Zhuang chuckled at that.

Bo shook his head. “We’re the richest nation on Earth, Bao. That’s proof enough. Our way works. I thought you of all people would understand that.”

He stood to leave, this conversation was pointless.

Bao Zhuang’s words caught him at the door.

“Bo Jintao,” the old man said in his rich baritone. “People don’t demand a say in how they’re governed because they want to be rich. They demand it when they already are rich and crave something more. And they demand it mostly to keep power out of the hands of people like you and me.”