ABSTRACT
What is likely to be the enduring political legacy of the Deng Xiaoping era? What political developments occurred in China during the 1980s that are likely to persist or affect the country's path in the next century? These questions, explored in this essay, would be difficult to answer under any circumstances, but they are particularly perplexing in the aftermath of the student-led demonstrations that swept Beijing and other cities in April, May, and June 1989 and that engendered a massive crackdown.
