ABSTRACT
China preserved the same political system for some 2000 years, give or take a few bouts of disunity. The Roman Empire broke up and was never reunited; the Chinese empire broke up around the same time, but was reunited. Arguably, even the Maoist system was closer to the traditional one than to Stalin’s. This unique longevity should surely command the attention of all political scientists. What was there in the Chinese political culture that permitted the continual rebirth of the system? Scholars who work on the American political system sometimes wonder why their methods and theories aren’t adopted wholesale in comparative politics in general and Chinese politics in particular. But the singularity of the Chinese system suggests that maybe it should be the basis for the export of theory, rather than for imports. Instead of trying to apply sophisticated methodology constructed for research into, say, Congressional behavior patterns, maybe political scientists should drop preconceived notions and treat China as terra nova, strange, perhaps even exotic, but deserving of ground-up theoretical analysis.
