ABSTRACT
Though Mao sought to remedy the ills of bureaucratism through permanent revolution and new modes of organization, by the time of his death China had “one of the most bureaucratized social systems known to man.” 1 Markets were suppressed and nearly all aspects of society and economy came under Leninist bureaucratic control. In contrast, the post-Mao reforms have provided much impetus for reorganizing the government itself and rationalizing the Chinese state. In this chapter, I seek to answer the following two questions. Despite repeated government attempts to reform the government itself, why did the attempted government reforms produce few results in the 1980s but have proceeded rapidly since the mid-1990s? To what extent are the recent reforms rationalizing the Chinese state?
