Despite numerous controversies ahead of the Games — turmoil over the Olympic torch relay, the bloody suppression of Tibetan riots in March, and so on — the Games went spectacularly smoothly. Senior party cadres can give themselves a pat on the back for a job well done. Not for long, though. It is hard to exaggerate just how important the answers to those fundamental questions will be for China. Chinese society has reached a point where maintaining the status quo is simply not an option. Beijing is barely able to keep a lid on the tremendous social dislocation caused by the country’s pell-mell economic growth over the past 30 years, and the consequent misery suffered by untold millions — the unemployed, the landless, tens of millions of migrant workers laboring under inhuman conditions, the countless victims of widespread corruption. Government officials have acknowledged that up to hundreds of so-called mass incidents occur every day. These often violent eruptions of frustration occasionally threaten to spread into chaos; as the Olympics loomed, they were more tightly controlled, or often simply ignored by the media. Now that the Games are over, it’s a good bet that the turmoil will resurface.