Introduction

This chapter presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book compares East Asia and China to project a smoother and more successful political and economic transition for China. China's institutional arrangements, political machinery and economic infrastructures were modelled explicitly on the Soviet-style institutions that have now collapsed in Eastern Europe. In some Western quarters the collapse of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe has been taken as the triumph of liberal democracy and liberal capitalism, with implications that this triumph will extend to all of the Party states, including China. The book finds many similarities between elections in contemporary China and elections in pre-1989 Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union before glasnost. In all these countries, the state carefully managed the public sphere, and elections were constructed to give the formal appearance of a democratic polity. The book provides an important set of empirical and analytical tools for comprehending China's prospects.