The blind, barefoot lawyer, Chen Guangcheng, imprisoned for exposing the morally repugnant practice of forced abortion and sterilization, just evaded one of the world’s most sophisticated state police. It’s a shrewd move: figuring out how to get a sick blind man from his house arrest to Beijing—a daring cat and mouse game between the Chinese police state and reformers. And it was apparently done not because Chen wants asylum: He and his inner gang of reformers see their chance to press for a more democratic political system. In other words, Chinese reformers believe the system is cracking.

What matters for China is not whether Westerners believe the system is cracking. The question is: how do the Chinese view their own system?  Clearly reformers see the system fracturing. Chen escaped just as more news broke of power struggles at the top of the Communist Party, between Bo Xilai, his henchmen, and members of the Standing Committee.