ABSTRACT
Socialist China's bureaucracy has never approximated Max Weber's ideal type in terms of its environmental setting and internal structure. The Maoist political elite continously attempted a total change of China, initating one political campaign after another and thereby undermining possible routinization and institutionalization of political process. Even those from the lowest class of preliberation China have diminished gratitude to the party because of their experiences with past political turmoil. There are several concrete reasons for China's failure to reduce the size of the bureaucracy. As China becomes more complex and industrialized, the need for specialized agencies will continue to grow. The highly centralized bureaucratic structure in China does not leave many "important matters" for the lower-Ievel party committees to decide. The 1989 democratic movement drastically changed China's political atmosphere, leaving the future direction of bureaucratic reform uncertain, the official policy since the Tiananmen incident is not promising.
