Police officers stand guard outside of the Hong Kong's Chief Executive C.Y. Leung's office on October 2, 2014 in Hong Kong. (Anthony Kwan/Getty Images)
Opinion writer
In 2006, Chinese American scholar Minxin Pei published a book called “China’s Trapped Transition.” In it, he invoked the most established “law” in political science — that over time, countries that grow economically tend to become more democratic. (Oil-rich states are the exception.) China had achieved decades of growth, Pei pointed out, yet had made almost no moves toward openness. In private and public conversations around the publication of his book, he predicted that problems would emerge in six to seven years — in other words, right about now. So, I asked him, is what we are witnessing in Hong Kong a major crisis?
