As you report, the National People’s Congress, China’s rubber-stamping legislature, has recently adopted a new five-year plan with a blueprint for a “happy China” (“Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” March 19, 2011). Increasing happiness, enlightened officials now insist, is more important than increasing output. Officials also talk about setting up “happiness indices” by which government performance could be judged across the land. Amidst the government’s crackdown on dissidents, this is frightening, indeed. It is especially frightening in view of the officials’ apparent determination to please leaders in Beijing, as you suggest. In short, happiness will be delivered come what may. Be happy, or else. Although you do not mention him in your article, I can imagine that George Orwell is kind of happy in his grave. As he put it in Nineteen Eighty-Four, in the contest between freedom and happiness, it is happiness that will win. He was off by just a quarter of a century, anyway.