Today's Financial Times leads on an inspiring story from China:"In two highly unusual public challenges to core tenets of Communist rule in China, an academic has announced the launch of a democratic opposition party and farmers in four provinces have claimed ownership of land seized by local authorities."

Another story in the same issue explains how"[b]old activists hold Beijing to account."

"For an authoritarian Communist party to paint itself as a promoter of democracy and individual property rights was always going to be a political strategy with some risks.

"Less than three months after a much-heralded congress of China’s ruling communists at which party leaders restated their commitment to 'democratic' values and private property, they are being called to account on those very issues by some unusually bold critics."