Every country is defensive in response to outside critics. Authoritarian countries are often more defensive than most. When you ask about dissidents and democracy here in China, you get pushback among the elites in a nation that values stability above everything else. Officials claim U.S. media exaggerates China as an economic and strategic threat. China would like "more balanced, objective reports on the other side," was a typical comment, made by Xie Feng, chief of the North American section at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

But China is pretty candid about two shortcomings: the environment and protection of patents and other intellectual property. Maybe the pollution is so obvious it can't be spun away. Yesterday, as we left Beijing to fly to Nanning, near Vietnam in the west, the haze was so thick you couldn't see more than a few hundred yards. But a thing's obviousness is not necessarily a disqualification for authoritarian regimes to deny it. (cf. Baghdad Bob.)

China's leaders genuinely realize that they need to clean the country up."Bluer skies, more forest, more grassland," is part of what China wants in the next decade, Xie says. Yesterday's China Daily had a grim article about totally unregulated mom-and-pop mines in the north that are surrounded by hundreds of acres of dead fields that result from tailings and other pollution.

Likewise leaders acknowledge their entrepreneurs are pirating intellectual property. "I admit there is much room for improvement in that regard," Xie said.

Words are not actions, but they're a start. China's pollution hurts its people and causes internal dissent. China can't rely forever on copying other people's products to generate the growth it so desires. If the nation places a premium on stability, it may understand that these are two of the most destabilizing threats it faces.