"...  Still, consensus -- for all the hurdles it must overcome -- remains the most likely way out. For all its political polarization, Egypt still has a genuine abhorrence for violence that makes a civil war unlikely -- for now. The experience with one dictatorship means that the country may be reluctant to go back to another, and this makes a coup unlikely -- for now...  Every year in which the protests continue, traffic is paralyzed, the pound devalues, and voters shake their heads at the flames and bodies on their television screen increases a public desire for some resolution, any resolution, at whatever cost. More widespread violence or a return to military rule, currently barely imaginable, may become real possibilities. This specter, the more likely it becomes, will bring Egypt's factions to work together to rebuild state authority. They still have some time."

"...  Yet although China’s footprint will become ever more important for the world, the drivers of its internal debates will be increasingly domestic. In the past, Europeans assumed that as China became wealthier and more developed, it would inevitably become more like us. This led to a lack of curiosity about the country’s internal debates and an attempt to divide its thinkers and officials into “reformers” who embrace western ideas and “conservatives” who want to return to the Maoist past. Europeans now need to change their mental map to deal with a China whose internal structure and structural relationship with the rest of the world have been turned on their head."