ABSTRACT
The mid-1990s is a crucial juncture in China's tortuous and difficult transition from a hard-line communist regime to a somewhat softer one, as the country goes through a complex process of both institutional decay and renewal that will profoundly shape its political destiny. For all practical purposes, poor health forced Deng Xiaoping to cede his decision-making power to other leaders in 1994, although two years later his presence continued to cast a long shadow over politics in Beijing. In the early 1980s, shortly after launching its economic reforms, the Chinese government undertook some limited political institutional reforms of the state bureaucracy, the legal system, and the representative organs. As a testimony to the changing political norms in China, the Chinese Communist Party accepted such outcomes. On the surface, the fact that the state's revenues have declined drastically seems to contradict the claim that the Chinese state has become excessively predatory.
