On our trips to wife's hometown in rural Baoshan, we've pretty much had to spend a night in hotel in Dali on the way, before taking a bus west to Yongping and then shared car south to rural Baoshan in the following day.

Sometimes it's a choice though, because there are friends to see in Dali - but more often necessity.

With this new train, we may be able to take early train to Dali, and have enough time to get to Yongping and to our final destination within same day.

So for us, and I believe many western Yunnanese who make way home, this will mean opportunity to skip more of Dali.

What has probably changed in last few years, is that local authorities are increasingly offering cash rewards to citizens who report any kind of suspicious activities by foreigners - be it drugs, prostitution, or spying.

Overall, my opinion about "socialism with Chinese characteristics" is that the "Chinese characteristics" should be limited to absolute single party rule in Beijing to decide laws and the directions that the country goes.

Implementing those laws should (and are) left to local level governments, and these local level governments should be accountable to the people.

These officials do not need be democratically elected, but they should serve the people democractically.

The people should hold local government officials accountable for implementing the decisions that dictators in Beijing dictate. This is where the democracy in China should thrive. The people should have direct channels to Beijing to report failures of local officials, and Beijing should be quick to respond.

People shouldn't even have a need to go to barricades, if they could trust the supposedly strong central government to deal with issues.

This does absolute not mean that the rule of party would decrease - it would increase, through and for the people. The central government will become stronger, when they don't have to watch inefficient local officials holding posts that they don't deserve.

They implement this accountability retroactively now, and Yunnan is no stranger to this. Development toward society with people first will also mean officials being accountable first and not sometime later.

And I believe that the system will naturally develop to that.

Anti-corruption campaign has changed the picture, where those who want easy life with kickbacks and gifts aim for official positions with capacity to receive them. Increasingly it is so, that those who really want to serve the people even consider these positions.

A smart to-be official like this will eventually perhaps voluntarily ask the people if they want him to take the post to begin with. And that's not far from western-like democracy, even if no formal elections ever take place and the important decisions keep being made by dictators in Beijing.

Foreign observes can keep commenting about those decisions made in Beijing to end of days, while China should ignore that and not fuel the fire by having the decisions (whether good or bad) not properly carried through local levels.

This is increasingly important now, when structural changes (of which many can not be expected to be popular with all components of society) are required to float the ship.

For Chinese, the country being a dictatorship of the party would be better than a being broken dictatorship of the party, that it has been in past.

@nnoble: "Why should anyone assume that China aspire to become democratic or why 'democracy' should be considered a suitable system of governance for China?"

Now you are incorrecly assuming that choice between democracy or any other system is a black and white decision that defines the entire governing system of a country.

Even China does have some democracy in grassroots (rownship etc) levels, and increasing this kind of democracy does not mean abandoning the rule of the party or socialism with Chinese characteristics. The opposite in fact - well measured moves to increase democracy in select areas can strengthen the rule of the party.

Simple truth is that when people get sufficiently fed and housed, their minds start to wander to what else they should or could get.

Should they be wanting KTVs and KFCs, or guarantee that now they have proper housing, they won't have to move again just because some businessman from Zhejiang wants to build a dam or a mine right in that spot - with or without their permission, with or without proper environmental guards.

Also there are some possible positive consequences that could be expected from removing poverty in China. It is clearly an area where the state is putting lot of money and resources, and once that is done, what next?

Optimists could expect the country's self esteem and confidence to raise from "job well done", which could release political will to liberal reforms - further increase rule of law, civil society, or even democracy.

But an unavoidable next step is to build support to the aging population.

So just as important as removing poverty is, possibly even more important is to get it done so the country can move to other things.