ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the sequence of events and decisions made by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders in the three years between 1988 and 1991. The chapter focuses on a comparison of the two political structures of the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China (PRC): the complex pseudo-federal state system, and the party-government ruling system. It discusses the relationship between the progress of reform and the collapse of one-party rule. There are two foci: the sudden dissolution of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in late 1991; and the political implications of its demise for China. China abandoned most political reforms before the Tiananmen incident in June 1989; while China abandoned reform, the Soviet Union proceeded with it. China appreciated Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika. According to Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Moscow, Gorbachev almost single-mindedly pursued his political goal of ending the Cold War.
