ABSTRACT
On December 5, 1978, Wei Ching-sheng put up a wall poster entitled "The Fifth Modernization" on the Democracy Wall along Peking's Ch'ang-an Boulevard. The historical tradition of imperial China was that of an autocracy, but an autocracy limited very much to the level of central and provincial institutions, and extended through its bureaucratic agents to the level of the county. The power of the people to run their own affairs—in Sun's view, the essence of democracy—had only real meaning if the country were free from foreign dominance because people's sovereignty meant the freedom of the nation as a whole. In the realm of Chinese Communist party (CCP) control, the first major quest for democracy occurred during spring 1957, in the campaign that has become known as the Hundred Flowers Movement. The wave of criticism did not stop at administrative mistakes and deficiencies, as Mao Tse-tung had intended. Instead, it turned increasingly toward more fundamental aspects of CCP rule.
