China better described as "internal pluralism" rather than "autocracy"?

Anne-Marie Slaughter reporting on a Singapore conference:
"Instead of describing the Chinese political system as an "autocracy," some at the conference argued that we should think of it as a system of "internal pluralism," where the checks and balances are all inside the party and government structure. The Communist Party has 80 million members -- with a collective leadership of nine members, growing local power, and calls for internal party democracy, there is far more pluralism in the Chinese system than first meets the eye".

Also noteworthy:   China facing enormous water shortages, most young Chinese get their news from relatively uncensored micro-blogging, women control family finance and ARE the market, there are lots of new Chinese patents but only 1700 were recognized by the US patent office last year.