China's future path is a stark choice between four options, or trajectories as they call them, as laid out by The Foundation for Law, Justice and Society (FLJS) at the University of Oxford in a report (link from Asiabizblog.com) considering whether China's transition is 'stalled'. These four, under the strangely familiar banner of One Country, Four Perspectives, are so descriptive they require little further explanation:

• Liberal evolution
  
• Authoritarian resilience
  
• Imminent collapse, and
  
• Authoritarian stagnation
  

The report bulges with talk of calculating ruling elites, a political monopoly overriding the culmination of full market reform and ominous indications of the development of a predatory state and systemic risks. Ultimately, what's going on in China right now is called (deceptively harmonious-sounding)

...Partial Reform Equilibrium.

And basically, the choice from here onwards ranges between

• Evolving, like China's two-tiered household registration system which is set to be reformed to allow freer migration between cities and the countryside;
  
• Persisting, like the stinky smell from 10 branches of the Liaohe River, for which reason 200 small paper-making plants will be shut down in Liaoning this year; 
• Collapsing, like the roof of a slag pit in Liaoning; or
  
• Stagnating, like China's manufacturing competitiveness in some industries, at least according to more than half of the 66 foreign-invested firms surveyed by the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce.

Let's not throw out China's new lively intellectual class, however, whose influence (writes Mark Leonard in the March edition of Prospect magazine) is actualy amplified by China's repressive political system that can use intellectual debate as a surrogate for politics. In the long term China's one-party state may well collapse, yet although China is not as yet a fully open intellectual society,

it is so big, so pragmatic and so desperate to succeed that its leaders are constantly experimenting with new ways of doing things. They used special economic zones to test out a market philosophy. Now they are testing a thousand other ideas - from deliberative democracy to regional alliances. From this laboratory of social experiments, a new world-view is emerging that may in time crystallise into a recognisable Chinese model...

(For another encouraging political outlook for China in 2008, see Economic Observer's views on why this year will be a key point in Chinese history).

All of this cuts no ice for FLJS at Oxford University though. Which of the four 'trajectories' does their report consider, on balance, the more likely outcome in China? You guessed it:

Option number four!, with a gradual dissipation of vigour and momentum projected to set in. Ouch!