Czech press survey - August 9

CeskeNoviny: Prague - The project of the junior Czech government TOP 09 with support of Mayors seems to be losing momentum now that the latter have attained the main goal with which they entered the alliance, that is the passing of a law on redistribution of money that gives many more millions to small municipalities, Vaclav Dolejsi writes in Mlada fronta Dnes today.

However, not only the mayors, but also some former members of the Christian Democratic Party (KDU-CSL) who went over to TOP 09 now mind that the tired-looking party chairman Karel Schwarzenberg sleeps during the outbursts of the Finance Minister and the party´s founder, Miroslav Kalousek, who has got used to that he can do anything, Dolejs writes.

If TOP 09 and the Mayors split up, it will be logical. But there are many personalities among the TOP 09 deputies who unnecessarily stay in the shade of the party´s main protagonists, Schwarzenberg and Kalousek, Dolejs writes.

Yet, they have many advantages: they are more active than the chairman but at same time rather calmer than the stormy finance minister, Dolejs writes.

Harvests have always been be better one year and worse another year, but the prices of food may be also influenced by other things that are far away from what is going on in the fields, such as the use of biofuels ordered by governments, Martin Weiss writes in Lidove noviny.

He writes that this means that the growth in food prices has both political causes and political impacts.

Politicians in small countries cannot do anything about this. In 2008 then Social Democrat leader Jiri Paroubek used the higher prices to attack the reforms that right-wing prime minister Mirek Topolanek was carrying out, Weiss writes.

It was also a growth in food prices that brought about the Arab Spring. What will it bring this year? Weiss asks.

The fall of the ambitious Bo Xilai who was heading for China´s narrowest party top has deeply challenged for some time the West´s respect for the ability of the Chinese leadership to be managing for decades the generational change without any big social turbulences, Adam Cerny writes in Hospodarske noviny.

It is not yet clear who will prevail in the dispute between the supporters of communist orthodoxy and supporters of cautious reforms, Cerny writes.

He says much is at stake and recalls that Prime Minister Wen Jiabao said no economic reforms can be carried out without successful political reforms and that what China has attained can be lost without the reforms.