Will China's Charter 08 Emerge as a Blueprint for Political Change?

Signed by over three hundred prominent Chinese citizens, China's Charter 08 calls for an end to some of its essential features of China current political system, including one-party rule, and their replacement with a system based on human rights, equality, democracy and the rule of law. From the document:

Authoritarianism is in general decline throughout the world; in China, too, the era of emperors and overlords is on the way out. The time is arriving everywhere for citizens to be masters of states. For China the path that leads out of our current predicament is to divest ourselves of the authoritarian notion of reliance on an "enlightened overlord" or an "honest official" and to turn instead toward a system of liberties, democracy, and the rule of law, and toward fostering the consciousness of modern citizens who see rights as fundamental and participation as a duty.

[JH]