ABSTRACT
During the reform era Zhejiang has paradoxically been a province where the rate of economic growth has been at the forefront of those experienced across the country, while sweeping social change, which has undoubtedly occurred as a result of reform and opening to the outside world, has taken place against a political backdrop of political conservatism, caution and obsession with ideological orthodoxy, all features which demonstrate a remarkable continuity with the Maoist years. Zhejiang presents the paradox of a rapidly advancing economy, a vibrant, more open society (although constrained within parameters which, while enlarging inexorably, are still basically determined by the ruling party) yet a stagnant political system whose only signs of life are sporadic and relatively inconsequential.
