ABSTRACT

The experience of the 1980s taught the CCP that it was politically dangerous to rely too heavily on economic performance as a basis for legitimacy. Unable to reconcile its Marxist ideology with the increasingly active role of the market and unwilling to wholeheartedly embrace institutional and other political reforms, the party looked more and more to the economy as a means of shoring up its popular appeal. Notwithstanding the economic achievements of this period and the financial benefits enjoyed by many people, the reforms also brought with them some undesirable, if inevitable, socio-economic side-effects as discussed previously. In the absence of any other credible form of legitimacy to deflect public attention away from these problems, many people in China began to resent the CCP, culminating ultimately in the national demonstrations of spring 1989.