GOODBYE JIANG

Simon has more on the resignation of Jiang Zemin from his final position at the top of China's communist party, including initial reactions from the Asian blogosphere at his Asia by Blog feature.

Some are hopeful that Jiang's retirement will eventually mean a bit of a more reasonable attitude from China on Taiwan, possibly some degree of political liberalization and perhaps even a reevaluation of the Tiananmen massacre.

All of that would be nice, but my hopes aren't that high and I can't see any of that happening in the short term.

I'm thinking that the best thing that may come out this in the more immediate sense is that we won't have to see another discussion of the incomprehensible 'three represents' theory.