Not learning from history?
From what little I know (by reading about it), I understand that the senior figures in the Chinese government are 'technocrats' and so you'd think that they'd do their research and understand what is likely to happen when a 'free market, capitalist' economy is unleashed onto a previously 'socialist' society. They have the recent example of the USSR to consider. They also have access to a hundred years of records of what happens in the traditionally capitalist societies of the West when politicians pass laws to modify people's economic behaviour.
So, is it because becoming a politician makes people stupid and arrogant, or is it only stupid and arrogant people who want to become politicians?