ABSTRACT
The Democracy Movement of 1989 and its suppression marked a watershed for developments in post-Mao China. Deng Xiaoping’s relative dominance within the system from the late 1970s to the late 1980s gave way to declining participation in the post-Tiananmen phase and to the steady consolidation of power by Deng’s appointed successor, Jiang Zemin. The centrality of the ideological and political conflict between moderates and radical reformers in the previous period was replaced by a more complex and uncertain phase of transition in the decade following the events of June 4, 1989.
