ABSTRACT
Since the political crises of 1989, China’s trajectory of political and economic change has diverged radically from that of virtually all of the states that were governed by similar political regimes at the beginning of that year. Only two such regimes – China and Vietnam – have avoided prolonged recession and have experienced rapid, market-oriented economic growth.1 And these are the only ones in which communist parties have continued to rule with little disruption of past organizational practices. This raises two key questions about China’s future political trajectory. The first is the one that has received the most attention: to what extent has the party’s capacity to govern changed during these years? Are there any signs of the kinds of political decay that led to the collapse of so many regimes after 1989, or has the party elite revitalized itself and strengthened its ties with key sectors of society? The second question is often neglected: mindful of the evolving features of the party, what are the crucial challenges it will face in the coming years, and what kind of role can we expect it to play as an agent of future political change? The longer that China continues along its current trajectory of change, the less relevant are the prior examples of collapse and regime change in Eastern Europe and the USSR. The real question is whether it still makes sense to think of China with reference to these failed states, or whether we should begin to think about it in new ways that reflect how far it has diverged from the old socialist model.
