Regardless, the good old days are most certainly over. Something big is on the horizon, but there's mixed reports about.

I would agree here. Read a book called the great deception or something similar. A former soviet politburo predicted that China will introduce a pseudo-democracy in 2016 to make the west believe they have reformed, but it will actually be similar to Russia where one party and one president maintains power, or similar to that of Kazakhstan where the same leader stays in power for a long time and crushes dissent.So not the CPC but not western style democracy either.