ABSTRACT
Since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, the Chinese political system has experienced a spectacular sequence of events. During the decade under scrutiny, China passed a water-shed. In 1972, totalitarian revolutionaries ruled the nation; by 1982, China’s rulers had become authoritarian reformers. In the wake of their victory in 1949, Mao Zedong and his colleagues acted upon their belief that rapid, violent, and comprehensive transformation of elites and institutions was the most effective mode of change. The leadership’s dedication to the attainment of a strong and prosperous China is no less than Mao’s. However, their appraisal of the disastrous consequences of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, as well as their sensitivity to the excesses of the anti-rightist and rectification campaigns of 1957—which Deng himself helped direct—has caused them to depart sharply from Mao’s choice of means.
