ABSTRACT
The emergence of the new rich in the PRC was no accident of the liberal-
ising economic system. Rather, it was a conscious consequence of CCP
design. The CCP has been instrumental in providing the economic and
social structures required for the creation of this wealth, and as well-
schooled Marxists, the Party leadership no doubt realised that such a fun-
damental change in the economic substructure would produce equivalent
dramatic shifts in the superstructure of culture, ideology and politics.
Scholars and commentators expended considerable energies during the 1990s exploring whether the emergence of this would indeed generate
demand for liberal democracy. It quickly became apparent through cross-
national studies that the new rich have had no difficulty cooperating with a
full range of government structures: from democratic through to author-
itarian (Robison and Goodman 1996b: 2-3). However, research findings
also showed that while the economic reforms propelling wealth creation did
not always produce a USA-style political system, they have produced
change in the relationship between the ordinary people and the state (Saich 2000).
