ABSTRACT
What has the market done to the Chinese Communist Party? This is no idle question nor is it a simple one. It seems obvious that as a party bent to “build a harmonious society,” today’s Chinese Communist Party is a far cry from its Maoist incantation of class warfare and “continuous revolution.” But the question remains whether it is a change of policy or a change of identity. In fact, the far more frequently invoked question with regard to the Chinese Communist Party is: When will it collapse? Ever since the fall of communism in Eastern Europe 20 years ago, this question has resurfaced at every slight downturn of the economy or any sign of social unrest. Most China experts now would dismiss it as simplistic; yet it stubbornly persists. One reason stems from the common assumption that the free market is inherently incompatible with communism. A second and perhaps more important reason is the gap in our knowledge. While China’s three decades of rapid economic growth and its dramatic rise on the world stage since the turn of the century are familiar stories told around the globe, people outside China in general know very little about its ruling party. This gap in our knowledge is unsettling. It becomes misleading too when combined with the assumption mentioned earlier, thus creating the irony of waiting for the collapse of a regime so wildly successful.1 Nevertheless, the notion is deeply rooted that communism and the market do not belong together and that the wax of one must be matched by the wane of the other. The rise of the market is the fall of communism.
