Chiang Kai-shek’s great-grandson’s visit to Communist China next week will come at what the Confucian sages might call a most auspicious — or, from another point of view, inauspicious —  moment. The mainland is tense. The economy is faltering. The financial “tremors” come, the Times reports, as the Chinese are “contending with slowing businesses and shrinking personal fortunes.” Analysts warn of a “Lehman Moment.” 

The bet by the communist tyranny has been that its subjects would tolerate the heavy hand of the regime provided it led to rising prosperity. That quo of the economic quid is now in doubt, reminding of the principle that a successful economy is not possible without unfettered political liberty as well as economic liberty. They are both required, we often note. The way to think of them is as the warp and woof of the fabric of freedom.