ABSTRACT
For elites, the chief advantage of reform is greater career security, offering a fixed and rational set of "rules of the game" whereby officials can exert greater control over their life chances. A partial reform crisis at the system level is analogous to a succession crisis at the level of leadership. A succession crisis tends to paralyze the decision making capacity of the system by raising the prior issue of who decides. For a number of years it may not be entirely clear to many Chinese whether the process they are undergoing is socialist reform or "peaceful evolution". China may realistically hope to take the same road to political reform as Taiwan or South Korea. Throughout both the Mao and Deng reigns, the Chinese people have placed great store in political solutions to all manner of problems, and, although in the course of time they have become more locally self-reliant, it seems unlikely that past habits will dissipate quickly.
