ABSTRACT
The historical image of the ancien regime is part of the ideology of the revolution and defines, by contrasts and opposites, the revolutionary program. Probably less from imitation than from parallel impulses, modem revolutionaries everywhere, including those in China, have fashioned their own, appropriate "ancien regime". Although both Mao and Deng Xiaoping have aspired to change China profoundly, under Deng the methods would minimize violence and hew to a practical gradualism, in contrast to the headlong ruthlessness of Mao's transformational mobilizations. One useful way to particularize an analysis of June 4, 1989, is to locate the Deng era within China's broader modern experience. Like the Deng regime, dissenting students and intellectuals saw China plagued by multiple vestiges of the past, and their rhetorical stances may be interpreted in light of this vision of overlapping anciens regimes. The ancien regime of the Qing was highly visible in the protesters' pronouncements, both rhetorically and analytically.
