This is such a transcendently BRILLIANT idea on so many levels that I cannot BEGIN to express my admiration. Or not.

Go for it. Although Germans might be better off confining their negative comments (as in the past) to - well you know whom I am referring to. Could be problems with doing it in the Middle East or China.....

"Equally, visitors to Egypt – where 1m Germans travelled last year – could ask hotels for information on why emergency powers have been in place since the early 1980s."

Ummmmm - I would have thought the reasons for the emergency powers were obvious. Beginning with a little shootout in 1987 which resulted in a number of German and Swiss and Italian tourists returning home in the cargo hold. Not to mention the occasional bomb splashing touristic body parts all over various places in the Red Sea resorts.....

Egypt doesn't wish to lose it's tourist trade to disgruntled members of the Muslim Brotherhood - t'is as simple as that. Turkey faces a simplar (although less extreme) problem.

I personally am thinking of visiting both places this autum, but sans police protection I would not. It wouldn't remotely be safe enough. What does one call a Nile cruise boat? Without police security I would call it - a target.....

Perhaps you could answer a question, Joerg?

Why should the Chinese free dissidents? Perhaps there are good answers to that one, answers which might appeal to the Chinese government on self-interest grounds.

So another question: Why should the Chinese governmet care a jot about what the German government or people think about such matters? Will not doing so change anything? Can the Germans apply any pain for not caring?

Zyme, the Kaiser's government appeared stable - until it wasn't.

In teh same time frame the Manchu government of China under the 'Old Dragon Empress' appeared stable - until it wasn't.

In France three governmets in a row appeared stable - until they weren't. Charles X, King Louis-Philippe, and 'Emperor' Louis Napoleon all appeared to be the epitome of stability at their zenith - but had feet of clay.

Are you really willing to bet the house on the Chinese oligarchy? Such systems look good but are really quite fragile - in the long term.....

Zyme, I left out the crowning example of stability suddenly turning to instability - the Shah of Iran.

The US got quite close to the Shah. Do you think that helped Washington with the next government?

Getting too cozy with monarchs or oligarchs can positively RUIN your long-term relationship with a country if you are not careful. China looks like a vast strong oak from without - as did Wilhemine Germany. But great trees rot from within but invisibly to the usual outsider.

I think the parallels between Wilhemine Germany and China are striking. They both had/have economic growth, both share relatively repressive political regimes very slow to reform. Both had rising discontent and repression of the discontented.

Wilhemine Germany felt the pressure and responded poorly - in large part because the political system could not throw out the old bums and bring in a new set. China shares the same problem.

Does Germany willing to bet the house that the result won't be similar? As the US did with the Shah of Iran?

"And I also think that the current Chinese regime will not remain over the course of our lifetime."

I agree. The question of change will become paramont.

China is a huge economic success. Much as Germany was between 1870 and 1900. In neither country has political reform remotely kept pace with the economic changes. In Germany that led to rising pressures which eventually contributed to the genesis of WWI and a political crisis lasting two generations. I'm fairly certain that China's crisis won't take the same form as the German one did. But I'm certain China will have it's crisis nonetheless - and it will be a sharp one.

I have to wonder whether the relative laggard India isn't a better bet than China in the long haul, because India does possess a system capable of political reform and has repeatedly proved it.