Ideological reform and political legitimacy in China: Challenges in the post-Jiang era

There is a widespread conviction among Western China scholars that economic reforms in the PRC over the past 25 years have rendered ideology obsolete. According to conventional wisdom, economic performance is left as the only factor to bestow regime legitimacy to the Chinese party-state, implying that Communist one-party rule will immediately plunge into a serious legitimacy crisis should economic success one day falter. Ideology, on the other hand, is said to have degenerated from a set of formerly quasi-religious beliefs into a mere façade of a ‘Communist’ regime that has long taken the ‘capitalist road’.