ABSTRACT
In contrast to the pathways of post-Communist transformation in Central
and Eastern Europe as well as in the former Soviet Union (Sparks 1997;
Downing 1996; Splichal 1994), China seems to be turning itself into some-
thing akin to what O’Donnell (1978) described as a bureaucratic-author-
itarian regime. O’Donnell was referring to right-wing capitalist
dictatorships in Latin America that were intent on using economic devel-
opment to quell political participation and to make up for the lack of a
mandate. Authoritarian Asian regimes of South Korea (Park et al. 2000), Taiwan (Lee 2000) and Singapore (Sim 2001) were noted for justifying their
suppression of press freedom and civil liberties on the ground that eco-
nomic growth is predicated on social stability. We maintain that bureau-
cratic-authoritarian regime is becoming a useful concept to understand
China in its contested and not always linear transition from a left-wing to a
quasi-right-wing dictatorship. China’s officialdom has attached highly
negative connotations of chaos and failure to the Soviet political reform,
claiming that its own reform policies have brought about enormous benefits to people and are once again making the Chinese nation mightily proud in
the world arena. Yet China’s impressive record of economic growth is
achieved at the expense of social justice: peasants and unemployed urban
workers have been gravely deprived of a socialist ‘‘safety net’’ in terms of
jobs, housing, education, medical care and a decent income. Coterminous
with China’s embrace of the global capitalist structure and the rise of
nationalistic sentiment, more and more domestic capitalists have been
ordained as new Communist Party members. Preservation of power has become the very end of the Communist Party rather than a means to
achieving Communism.
