ABSTRACT
The Rapid economic development had in Taiwan and is having in China today many of the effects predicted by modernization theory: the growth of civil society and social and intellectual pluralism, and the emergence of more liberal values, which place more of an emphasis on freedom and personal autonomy. The most striking parallel between Taiwan and China is the nearly identical profile of the growth trajectories in per capita income of the two systems, separated by a 26-year lag in time. For some analysts of contemporary China, like Minxin Pei, the party and the state lie at the core of the problem. China today differs dramatically from the historical example of Taiwan in some obvious ways. Perhaps the most obvious is scale: China's population today is more than 60 times that of Taiwan's during its transition. China today is dramatically different from Taiwan, then and now. Its path and pace of regime transformation will not follow Taiwan's.
