Journal of Contemporary China

ISSN: 1067-0564 (Print) 1469-9400 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjcc20

China's Prolonged Stability and Political Future:

Same political system, different policies and
methods
Dingxin Zhao
To cite this article: Dingxin Zhao (2001) China's Prolonged Stability and Political Future:
Same political system, different policies and methods, Journal of Contemporary China, 10:28,
427-444, DOI: 10.1080/10670560120067126
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10670560120067126

Published online: 02 Aug 2010.

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Journal of Contemporary China (2001), 10(28), 427444

Chinas Prolonged Stability and

Political Future: same political
system, different policies and methods
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DINGXIN ZHAO*
Contrary to the earlier political upheavals which culminated in the 1989 Prodemocracy
Movement, China has achieved an extended stability in the 1990s. This paper argues that
the prolonged stability resulted from a set of changes in Chinas statesociety relations,
and much of it was related to the 1989 movement. After the 1989 movement, the CCP
veterans selected younger leaders who were both reform-minded and had a Machiavellian
sense of politics. This new leadership skillfully managed the economy and contained
dissident activities from public attention. Reform and the booming economy also provided
many opportunities for intellectuals and students and turned them from the earlier
economic losers into the current winners. As market forces penetrated into China more
deeply and the state no longer took charge of everything as it used to, the Chinese became
less interested in national politics, and political con icts localized. This paper also argues
that although Chinas statesociety relations underwent great changes, the state still bases
its legitimacy on performance and is thus intrinsically unstable. A political reform that aims
at changing the basis of state legitimation becomes crucial.

Chinese society during the 1980s was characterized by frequent protests. The social
upheavals culminated in the 1989 Prodemocracy Movement when the confrontation
between the people and the government escalated into a bloody street battle in
which hundreds of people died and thousand s more were wounded. However,
except for the recent student demonstrations triggered by the NATO bombing of
the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia, there have been virtually no protesting
activities in China in the last 10 years with scales comparable to what happened
during the 1980s. This prolonged political stability was a surprise to many
observers, especially the dissidents who ed from China after the 1989 movement.
How to explain such prolonged political stability? What is the prospect for Chinas
political development in the early twenty- rst century? This article explores these
two issues, which are of wide interest.
In my study of the causes and development of the 1989 Prodemocracy Move* Dingxin Zhao is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Chicago. His major interest is social
movements and collective action and sociology of economic development . He has published many articles that analyze
the causes and patterns of development of the 1989 Student Movement in Beijing, and has just completed a book
on that topic. Part of the materials in this paper will also appear in the book, Power of Tiananmen: StateSociety
Relations and the 1989 Beijing Student Movement, published by the University of Chicago Press.
1067-056 4 print; 1469-9400 online/01/280427-1 8
DOI: 10.1080/1067056012006712 6

2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd

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DINGXIN ZHAO

ment in Beijing,1 I found that both the rise and the tragic ending of the movement
can be explained by the statesociety relations in China during the 1980s along
three dimensions: the nature of the state; the nature of society; and links between
the state and society. Here, I argue that the political stability of the 1990s was also
achieved through a series of changes in statesociety relations, and paradoxically
many of these changes were a result of the direct or indirect impact of the 1989
movement. Although the changes were remarkable, the deep-seated weaknesses in
Chinas statesociety relations, in particular those related to the foundation of state
legitimation , remain. Unless further political reforms are made to mend the
problems, the regime may face political challenges similar to those faced during the
1989 movement.
This paper proceeds as follows. First, I brie y de ne the three dimensions of
statesociety relations used in the analysis. Then, I discuss how the changing nature
of the state and society during the 1990s contributed to the political stability.
Finally, I explain, by following the statesociety relation perspective, why the
political stability may not be sustained without further political reforms.
The three dimensions of statesociety relations
The theory of statesociety relations that I have developed in earlier works
combines the state-centered theory with the civil society theory.2 It contains three
impure but non-reducible dimensions: the nature and patterned behavior of the
state; the nature of society; and the links between the state and society. Here, I
brie y discuss each of them in turn.3
The state is often classi ed in terms of its political nature. The most common
classi cation is democracy versus authoritarianism . A state is democratic when the
government commits to the rule of law, tolerates minorities, and government
leaders are elected by regular and competitive free elections participated in by a
majority of the adult population. A state is authoritarian if the regime has weak
political, social and even economic pluralism, and is led by leaders that are not
popularly elected and are not always subject to the legal codes that they have
created. The political nature of the state not only reveals the base of state power,
1. See Dingxin Zhao, Defensive regime and modernization , Journal of Contemporar y China 7, (Fall 1994),
pp. 2846; Foreign study as a safety-valve: the experience of Chinas university students going abroad in the eighties,
Higher Education 31, (1996), pp. 145163; Decline of political control in Chinese universities and the rise of the
1989 Chinese Student Movement, Sociological Perspectives 40, (1997), pp. 159182; Ecologies of social
movements: student mobilization during the 1989 Pro-democracy Movement in Beijing, American Journal of
Sociology 103, (1998), pp. 14931529; State legitimacy, state policy, and the developmen t of the 1989 Beijing
Student Movement, Asian Perspective 23(2), (1999), pp. 245284; Statesociety relations and patterns of activities
during the 1989 Beijing Student Movement, American Journal of Sociology 105, (2000), pp. 15921632.
2. For the state-centered theory and its early development , see Theda Skocpol, States and Revolutions: A
Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Bringing the
state back in: strategies of analysis in current research, in Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeye r and Theda Skocpol,
eds, Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 337. For the civil society theory,
see John Ehrenberg, Civil Society: The Critical History of an Idea (New York: New York University Press, 1999);
John A. Hall, Civil Society: Theory, History, Comparison (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1995); and John Keane,
Democracy and Civil Society (London: Verso, 1988).
3. For more details of the theory, see Zhao, Statesociety relations and patterns of activities during the 1989 Beijing
Student Movement.

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CHINAS PROLONGED STABILITY AND POLITICAL FUTURE

but also shapes some regime-speci c state behaviors and statesociety relations.
Nevertheless, state behaviors are not just patterned by their political nature. The
behavior of a state is also shaped by the personal and collective experiences of the
top state leaders. For example, the French Revolution was instructive for other
European Old Regimes, leading them to more prudence, which prevented the
revolution from spreading. Similarly, the great depression triggered waves of
reforms in capitalist states unimaginable to orthodox Marxists. The economic
miracles of East Asian newly industrializin g countries and the collapse of Eastern
European communism certainly motivated the current Chinese state to reform itself.
The second dimension of statesociety relations is the structure or nature of
society. The nature of society includes a societys economic systems and the way
people are organized . Usually, market economy and strong intermediate organizations characterize the modern capitalism, while planned economy and state
manipulation s of social organizations are the norms of the state socialism. Economic systems and associational life are important features of a society because they
determine how peoples sentiments and interests are centered and organized . For
example, the density and strength of intermediate organizations have the following
social-movement-related functions. First, intermediate associations check state
power. Without them, state power is truly despotic, and peoples attention is
state-centered. 4 Second, intermediate organizations nurture bonds and contractual
relations among social groups, and create and sustain a shared identity and
tradition. Poorly organized individuals tend to have little mutual understandin g and
little capacity to pursue their interests in a coordinated manner.5 While poorly
organized movements tend to be driven by activities with strong emotional
elements, stronger organizations make the rationalization of movement strategy
possible. Finally, different organizations tend to have distinctive interests and tend
to nurture crosscutting identities of their members. Thus, the existence of strong
intermediate organizations prevents unitary national level mobilization.
The third dimension is where the state and society are linked. The importance of
economic and political linkages has been conventional wisdom. What I want to
emphasize here is the ideational links between the state and society, or peoples
perception of state legitimacy. State legitimacy has been de ned in many ways.6
There is also a signi cant difference between peoples perception of state legitimacy and the bases of state legitimation that authoritie s use to justify their rule.
This paper focuses on peoples perception of state legitimacy. In this article, I view
sources of state legitimation in terms of how state power is justi ed: by a
commonly accepted procedure; by the service that the state provides; or by a
4. Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and French Revolution (New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1955).
5. William Kornhauser, The Politics of Mass Society (New York: Free Press, 1959).
6. See Jurgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975); Samuel E. Finer, The History of
Government from the Earliest Times, Vol. I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); Chalmers A. Johnson,
Revolutionary Change, 2nd edition (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982); Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan,
Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist
Europe (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Claus Offe, The abolition of market control and
the problem of legitimacy (I), Kapitalistate 1, (1973), pp. 109116; Alan Wolfe, The Limits of Legitimacy (New York:
Free Press, 1977).

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DINGXIN ZHAO

promise for the future. Correspondingly , I de ne three types of state legitimation :

legalelectoral; ideological; and performance legitimacy.7
A state is likely to enjoy legalelectoral legitimacy when it takes laws as binding
principles of all social groups, including state elites themselves, and when top
leaders are popularly elected on a regular basis. Ideological legitimacy means that
state power is based on a grand vision that rests on future promises to which a
government is committed.8 Performance legitimacy refers to a states right to rule
resting on its role in leading economic development, its observance of certain moral
and ritual practices, or its ability in maintaining a state sanctioned nationalism .
Finally, when citizens tie their hopes to the ability and personality of one or a few
state leaders, the state enjoys charismatic legitimacy. Charismatic legitimacy can be
supplementar y to any kind of state legitimacy, but it tends to be an extreme form
of ideological legitimacy.9 These are all ideal types. In reality, a state seldom bases
its survival on a single source of legitimacy. However, in a particular country and
at any particular time, one source of state legitimacy tends to dominate.10
Explaining the political stability in the 1990s
Having de ned the three dimensions of statesociety relations, we are now ready
to explain the political stability in the 1990s. In the following, my analysis on the
change of statesociety relations in the 1990s will be situated in a comparison with
what happened during the 1980s. I start with the changing nature of the state and
its contributio n to the regimes political stability.
Changes in the state
After the military repression, many China experts believed that conservative s
would dominate the Chinese leadership and Chinas reform would stop. In fact, as
I have analyzed elsewhere,11 most Chinese top state leaders in the 1980s had two
basic convictions . First, because of the disastrous Maoist past, a general sense of
failure of the statesocialism model, and massive grievances in society, the top
state elites believed that a reform was the only way for the regime to survive.
Second, most top leaders of that time had joined the communist revolution long
7. The classi cation system is a modi ed form of Webers classi cation of the authority relations. See Reinhard
Bendix, Max Weber, An Intellectual Portrait (Garden City: Anchor Books, Doubleday and Company, 1960),
pp. 290297; Max Weber, The nature of social action, in W. G. Runciman and E. Mathews, eds, Max Weber:
Selections in Translation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 732.
8. One may nd similarities between legalelectoral and ideological legitimacy since legalelectoral legitimacy
has democracy as its ideological base. However, they are different in two aspects. Democracy only promises a
procedur e to select leaders, not a utopian future. More importantly, my de nition of legalelectoral legitimacy
emphasizes the procedural, not the ideological , aspect. Although democracy is the base of legalelectoral legitimacy,
over time it is the commonly accepted procedure of leadership selection, rather than the value system behind it, that
legitimizes a state.
9. De ned this way, peoples sense of state legitimacy can be assessed by their views on a states ideological claim,
their satisfaction with a states major performance , and their impression of the top state leaders.
10. For example, during Maos era, the dominant source of state legitimation was ideology. However, the state
also based its survival on Maos charisma, as well as on some public goods that the state delivered to the former lower
classes in society.
11. Zhao, State legitimacy, state policy, and the development of the 1989 Beijing Student Movement.

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CHINAS PROLONGED STABILITY AND POLITICAL FUTURE

before the communists took power and they had witnessed thousands dying for the
cause. They maintained a high loyalty to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party).
These two characteristics were re ected in Deng Xiaopings core political wisdomliangshou douyingwhich can be translated as being rm in maintaining
both the economic reform and political stability. This basic conviction among the
top state leaders was re ected in their selection of the next generation of state
leaders after the 1989 movement.
The three ousted top leaders, Hu Yaobang, Zhao Ziyang and Hu Qili, exhibited
different personalities and leadership styles; however, they had one common
characteristic: they did not seem to know how to effectively deal with crisis politics.
When a student movement started between 1986 and 1987, Hu Yaobang took almost
no action. During the 1989 movement, the Chinese media tried to free itself from
state control in order to report the movement positively .12 At the heyday of the
media rebellion in early May, Zhao Ziyang and Hu Qili, with a notion that open
Western media actually contribute to political stability, ordered that the media be
free. As a result, Chinas media were soon out of control. The extremely positive
of cial media reports on the movement during the hunger strike period mobilized
the emotions of hundred s of thousand s of Beijing residents and greatly sustained the
movement.
When these leaders were ousted , they were replaced by Jiang Zemin, Li Ruihuan
and later Zhu Rongji. The new generation of leaders shared two qualities; they were
major leaders of reform in the big Chinese cities during the 1980s, yet they appeared
to have keener intuitions in dealing with crisis politics. Here, let us look at the
activities of the two new leaders from Shanghai. In 1986, when Jiang Zemin was
informed that students at Jiaotong University were going to stage a large demonstration, he went to meet the students at the universitys auditorium immediately.
During the debate, he even recited the whole text of Lincolns Gettysburg Address
in English, trying to convince the students that he had no lesser an understanding
of democracy. Although his action might look showy and shallow to many people,
it did make a good impression among students and defeated the attempted
demonstration. 13 If this example showed that Jiang was exible in dealing with crisis
politics, his dismissal of Qin Benli, after Qin refused to make a change in a
provocative report to appear in the 24 April World Economic Herald, certainly
demonstrated that he was also able to confront a crisis.14
12. For the performance of major Chinese media during the 1989 movement, see Michael J. Berlin, The
performance of the Chinese media during the Beijing spring, in Roger V. Des Forges, Luo Ning and Wu Yen-bo,
eds, Chinese Democracy and the Crisis of 1989 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), pp. 263275;
Seth Faison, The changing role of the Chinese media, in Seth Faison, ed., The Chinese Peoples Movement:
Perspectives on Spring 1989 (Armonk: Sharpe, 1990), pp. 145163; Ching-Chang Hsiao and Yang Mei-Rong, Dont
force us to lie: the case of the World Economic Herald, in Chin-Chuan Lee, ed., Voice of China (New York: Guilford
Press, 1990), pp. 111121; Frank Tan, The Peoples Daily and the epiphany of press reform, in Des Forges et al.,
eds, Chinese Democracy and the Crisis of 1989, pp. 277294.
13. Gao Gao, Hou wengeshi [The Post Cultural Revolution Chinese History], vol. 2 (Taibei: Lianjing Chubanshiy e
Gongsi, 1994), pp. 318319; Pin He and Xin Gao, Zhonggon g Xinquangui [The New Communist Party Elites in China]
(Hong Kong: Lizhi Chubanshe , 1993), p. 97.
14. For details on the World Economic Herald incident, see Jinguo Shen, The rise and fall of the World Economic
Herald, 19801989, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 72, (1995), pp. 642663; Faison, The changing
role of the Chinese media; Hsiao and Yang, Dont force us to lie: the case of the World Economic Herald.

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DINGXIN ZHAO

The same was true for Zhu Rongji. Zhu was in charge of Shanghai after Jiang
Zemin left for Beijing in late May 1989. During that period, he showed no
romanticism concerning the movement as Zhao Ziyang did, nor was he afraid of
meeting the people as Li Peng appeared to be. Zhu went to many places, meeting
and talking with people, including making two televised speeches on 22 May and
8 June. 15 To avoid antagonizing the people, he seldom used phrases such as
anti-revolutionar y turmoil to refer to the movement. Instead, he emphasized the
negative consequences of the movement such as the paralysis of the public
transportatio n system and policing system, the problems of food supply in the city,
and the rising crime ratesome consequences of the movement that became
increasingly pronounced by late May. Zhu capitalized on the importance of
political stability to daily life and pled for the cooperation of the Shanghai people
for the sake of their common interest. Zhu did win support from the people. While
hundred s and thousands of Beijing residents were ghting street battles, Shanghai
workers organized in hundreds of thousand s to clear up roadblocks and maintain
public order.
In comparison to the top leaders during the 1980s, the current leaders also
showed much sophisticatio n in their management of state affairs. First, they
adopted different strategies in dealing with dissidents. In the 1980s, the government
often published articles and books to criticize the ideas of some dissidents and
demanded that people study these articles; an action that actually widely publicized
dissident ideas otherwise unknown to most people. Many public heroes during that
period, including Wei Jingsheng and Fang Lizhi, were actually created by the
government itself. In the 1990s, the top state leaders seldom did that. Instead, they
used professional police to control dissidents and periodically sent some dissidents
out of the country. By sending the dissidents out to Western countries, the state not
only freed itself from many troubles, but also used the dissidents as bargaining
chips in negotiation s with the United States. Consequently, dissident activities lost
much public attention in the 1990s.
Second there must be many power struggles among the current top leaders
although, until now there has been no indication that any of them has used the
1989 movement in personal politics. Their political instinct might have told them
that the event has been such a political wound that the emotional forces, once
released, may blow them away all together. The strategy they adopted in dealing
with the issue was called waisong neijin, that is to treat any timing and events
related to the 1989 movement seriously yet quietly so that the problem could be
controlled without public attention. For example, they must be aware that antirevolutionar y turmoil was a label to the movement that very few Chinese would
accept. Over time, they started to label the movement as a turmoil or simply an
event. They also emphasized the illegal aspect of the movement and possible
instabilities that the movement could bring if students succeeded (many Chinese
who had experienced the disastrous Cultural Revolution would be persuaded). Each
year around 4 June, the day that the military repression was carried out, the state
places many plain-clothed polices in Tiananmen Square and other sensitive loca15. Rongji Zhu, Jiefang ribao [Liberation Daily], (23 May and 9 June 1989).

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tions. Any sign of protesting activities is immediately stopped . In 1999, the

movements tenth anniversary, the state even blocked Tiananmen Square
and started some renovation work in order to prevent potential protesting
activities.
The most signi cant improvement in statesmanship , however, was in their
handling of the economy. During the 1980s, most top leaders did not have much
experience with a market economy and did not take the public tolerance of
uncertainties associated with the reform very seriously. Therefore, they greatly
expanded the universities in a time when the Chinese economy was still in a
labor-intensiv e stage of development,16 and implemented price reforms and other
radical reform measures in the late 1980s when peoples con dence in the reform
was at a very low level. These actions intensi ed the socioeconomic crisis before
the 1989 movement.17 In comparison, the leaders in the 1990s were more cautious
about the public tolerance towards reform. A good example is the successful
economic adjustment between 1994 and 1996. In 1992, the Chinese economy was
in another takeoff phase. Associated with the takeoff was over-expending , overinvestment and high in ation. In late 1993, the state decided to adjust the economy.
However, this adjustment was different in two aspects from earlier economic
adjustments. The earlier economic adjustments usually started at the time when the
economy was already in a very bad shape and the adjustment was carried out in a
way similar to slamming on a brake of a speedy vehicle, in icting pain upon the
whole of society. This time, the adjustment started while the economy was still in
good shape. Therefore, the state was able to carry it out at a better pace and only
target the problems that contributed to the over-heated economy. Also, by the early
1990s, market mechanisms had already penetrated the Chinese economy. Unlike
the earlier economic adjustments, this time the state used administrativ e measures
as well as market mechanisms such as interest rate, lending and taxation adjustment
to direct the economy.
In the next 3 years, the state brought down the economic growth rate from 14.2%
in 1992 to 9.7% in 1996. Meanwhile, the in ation rate decreased from 21.7% in
1994 to 6% in 1996. This adjustment was achieved by bringing down only 4.5%
of the growth rate in 4 years. This was the rst time in the history of China that
an over-heated economy was controlled without leading to a serious recession.18
Many Chinese economists called it a soft landing.19 In the next few years,
although the Chinese economy was still full of problems, it maintained a reasonable
growth rate and low in ation. By the late 1990s, a not really very healthy but pretty
well managed Chinese economy had become an important stabilizing factor during
the East Asian nancial crisis. The success of the economic adjustment contributed
to the regimes political stability.
In summary, the 1989 movement had actually acted as a selective force that
16. See Dingxin Zhao, Reform and Discontent: The Causes of the 1989 Chinese Student Movement (Ph.D.
Dissertation, Department of Sociology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, 1995).
17. Ibid, chapters 3 and 4.
18. Guoguang Liu and Shucheng Liu, Lun ruanzhaolu [On soft-landing], Xinhuawenzhai 3, (1997), pp. 4850.
19. Liu and Liu, Lun ruanzhaolu; Qinglin Gao and Xiaoguang Wang, Yici kongqian de chenggon g zhizuo,
Outlook Weekly 34, (1997), pp. 46.

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DINGXIN ZHAO

sieved out a group of leaders who could not be simply classi ed as reformers or
conservatives, but had a Machiavellian sense of politics and a better understand ing of economic issues. The behavior of this new state leadership contributed to the
regimes stability.

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The changing nature of society

Chinas political stability also ensued from great changes in society during the
1990s. While most changes were a result of state policy shift, the further
development of the market economy and civil society, others were unintended
consequences of the 1989 movement. For example, a paradox was that after the
1989 repression, the government actually gained trust among the Chinese people.
This is not to suggest that the people approved the blood y military repression.
Rather, during the 1980s, a major worry among Chinese was whether the state
policy was going to turn back to what it was during Maos era. Therefore, people
tended to associate many state policy adjustments with leftist revival and began to
panic. 20 However, Chinas reform continued in the 1990s. The fact that even after
the military repression the state still maintained the reform policy convinced many
Chinese that the reform was the only way out for the state. In my trips to Beijing
and Shanghai, I found that 1993 was the last year that most of the intellectuals and
urban residents were still drawn towards rumors about struggles between conservatives and reformers in the government. After that, this kind of factionalism rhetoric
became con ned to the Hong Kong media and Western analysts. Therefore,
although social changes were no less greater in the 1990s, the changes no longer
exerted the kind of psychologica l impact on the people as they had during the
1980s. Few Chinese now had any doubt about the general direction that the whole
society was going in. It was in this sense that the change of public psychology
contributed to the regimes stability.
Since intellectua l elites, the rank and le intellectuals and students, and workers
and urban residents were three major population s that had played important roles
during the 1989 movement,21 in the following I focus on the changes in each
population that contributed to the current political stability.22

20. See Zhao, Defensive regime and modernization.

21. In this article, I use the term intellectual elites to refer to a group of in uential culture creators, such as
professors, writers and researchers, who have keen political awareness and great aspiration to change the country
through their own cultural and political activities. In China, however , when modern education had just started, to
encourage students to enter the modern school, the Qing court granted those who received a Western education an
equivalent gentry title. The university graduates were equated to the Jinshi rank, high school graduates to the Juren
rank and junior middle school graduates to the Xiucai rank. Therefore, during the Republic of China, even middle
school graduates were considered as intellectuals. After the Cultural Revolution, middle school graduates were no
longer considered as intellectuals since most youngsters in cities had a middle school education. However, until very
recently most Chinese still consider people who had higher education, including university students, as intellectuals.
Following the convention, I refer to those who are not intellectual elites but have university education as rank and
le intellectuals. University students are also included in this broad category.
22. For the history of the 1989 movement , see Huigu yu fansi [Retrospection and Introspection] (Germany: Rhine
Forum, 1993); and Xiaoya Chen, The Democratic Movement on Tian-an-men Square, 1989 (Taibei: Fengyunshida i
Publishing Company, 1996).

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CHINAS PROLONGED STABILITY AND POLITICAL FUTURE

Intellectual elites. I have argued elsewhere that because of the long time repression and isolation, intellectua l elites during the 1980s did not have much trust
in the state, nor were they well-informed about the West. Moreover, because of
long time communist education, they were indoctrinated by radicalism and idealism
even though they no longer believed in Marxism. Consequently, Chinas intellectual discourse was dominated by idealism, opportunis m and radicalism. They all
facilitated the rise of the 1989 movement.23
The mood of intellectua l elites, however, changed greatly during the 1990s. First,
after the military repression, the most vocal and radical intellectual elites and
radical students ed to the West and the lesser ones were forced into silence. Yet,
in the 1990s the state actually adopted a more laissez-faire attitud e toward cultural
productions that over time became further commercially oriented . Much of the
focus of the Anti-spiritual Pollution Campaign in 1983 and the Anti-bourgeois
Liberalization Campaign in 1986 and 1987 was aimed at attacking the cultural
products that the orthodox Marxists considered as bourgeois. Such campaigns
antagonized many intellectuals and pushed them toward radicalism. In the 1990s,
however, no campaigns of similar scale were initiated . Equally important, after
1992, China experienced another economic boom. The repression in conjunction
with the economic opportunitie s induced a swift change in attitud e among Chinas
intellectual elites. In the 1980s, intellectual elites generally viewed communism as
a central problem and market economy and Western democracy as the solution.
Therefore, they frequently challenged the ideological base of the regime (the four
cardinal principles) and created crisis discourses by centering on grand and
abstractive issues such as the earth citizenship and demise of yellow civilization.24 By contrast, intellectual elites in the 1990s were more commercially
motivated . They were no longer so interested in directly challenging the regime,
and were more focused on activities that could increase pluralism in society and
meanwhile bring them immediate economic bene ts.25
Second, during the 1980s new ideas often had explosive effects in society.
There was a succession of many social fevers in urban China such as Sartre fever,
Nietzsche fever, River Elegy fever, and reportage novel fever.26 We also observed that
23. See Zhao, Defensive regime and modernization ; Reform and Discontent: The Causes of the 1989 Chinese
Student Movement.
24. The idea of earth citizenship was from Mao. Mao once said that China as a big nation should have a greater
contribution to the world, otherwise its earth citizenship would be in danger. In 1988, the World Economic Herald
staged a discussion on Chinas poor economic performance under state socialism. The discussion was centered on
the idea of earth citizenship. The demise of yellow civilization is one of the core ideas in the famous mini-TV series
River Elegy. Both the earth citizenship discussion and the River Elegy were major component s of the crisis discourses
during the late 1980s, which substantially contributed to the rise of the 1989 movement. For details on these events,
see Zhao, Reform and Discontent: The Causes of the 1989 Chinese Student Movement, chapter 3.
25. In 1997, I informally interviewed a young journalist. He earned between 5000 and 7000 yuan per month. The
main task of his job was to translate foreign movies for a TV station. During the interview, he expressed great
satisfaction with his job. He also mentioned his caution in the TV station in avoiding touchy topics that would challenge
the regime directly. However, except for some political taboos (which he had no interest in touching), he was basically
free to choose any foreign movies to translate and one of his criteria for choosing a particular movie was to promote
pluralism and tolerance in society. For example, he told me how he translated several movies with homosexua l themes,
hoping that the audiences could gradually accept homosexualit y as a way of life.
26. See Jing Wang, High Culture Fever (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); Zhao, Reform and
Discontent: The Causes of the 1989 Chinese Student Movement, chapter 2.

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hundreds, even thousands, of students jammed in a university auditorium to listen

to a talk by an intellectual elite.27 However, after over a decade of reform and open
door policy, the amount of information ow was skyrocketing in China. In the
newspaper industry, for example, even at its peak, the whole of China had only a
little more than 200 newspapers before the reform started.28 The number increased
to 1534 in 1991 and 2200 by 1995. By the end of 1995, a total of 72 million copies
were sold daily.29 With more and more books and news carrying different ideas
oating around in society, ideas no longer had an explosive effect as was the case
during the 1980s.
Third, if pro-Western mentality characterized the general intellectual mood of the
1980s, in the 1990s we saw a huge surge of nationalism among Chinese intellectuals. 30 This certainly re ected in the writing of several best sellers in China,
including China Can Say No and Behind the Scenes of a Demonized China,31 and
the recent mass demonstrations after the NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy
in Yugoslavia. What is striking is that many intellectual elites who promoted
nationalism were Western trained and were promoters of Western ideas during the
1980s. Therefore, the rise of nationalism was not just a product of government
propaganda even though the state had so far enjoyed its stabilizing effect. At a
surface level, events such as the Yinhe (Milky Way) ship incident several years ago
and the recent NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia have all
played important roles in the rise of the nationalistic sentiment in China.32
However, at a deeper level, at least among many intellectuals that I have talked to,
their sense of nationalism was triggered by two persistent facts. During the 1980s,
most of them were very excited about the former Soviet Unions path of political
development and were negative about Deng Xiaopings crossing the river by
touching the stone style of reform, but now they were disappointed by Russias
chaotic internal politics and poor economic performance. They were also disillusioned by what they believed as the fact that the Western countries were actually
not so interested in assisting Russia in its painful democratic transition than in
weakening its international position. Moreover, although the intellectuals that I
talked to were aware of many problems in China, they seemed to be content about
many positive changes since 1992. They were very disappointed by the US medias
27. Zhao, Reform and Discontent: The Causes of the 1989 Chinese Student Movement, chapter 3.
28. At its lowest point, that was in 1967, the whole of China had only 43 regular newspapers. See Yuezhi Zhao,
Media, Market and Democracy in China: Between the Party Line and the Bottom Line (Urbana and Chicago, IL.:
University of Illinois Press, 1998), p. 17.
29. See Wang, High Culture Fever; Zhao, Reform and Discontent: The Causes of the 1989 Chinese Student
Movement, chapter 2.
30. Suisheng Zhao, Chinese intellectuals quest for national greatness and nationalistic writing in the 1990s, China
Quarterly 152, (1997), pp. 725745.
31. Xiguang Li and Kang Liu, Yaomohua zhongguo de beihou [Behind the Scenes of a Demonized China] (Beijing:
Zhongguo Shehui Kexue Chubanshe, 1996); Qiang Song, Zangzang Zhang and Bian Qiao, Zhongguo keyi shuo bu
[China Can Say No] (Beijing: Zhongguo Gongshang Lianhe Chubanshe , 1996).
32. The Yinhe Incident started when US warships stopped a Chinese cargo ship in the open sea. The reason was
that China was using the ship to secretly send chemical weapons to Iran. Eventually, as the Chinese source claimed,
the US naval of cers boarded the ship to make an inspection but found nothing. However, the US side never apologized
for the action. The news that US marines could stop a Chinese cargo ship in the open sea to make a search as they
wanted created an outburst of public opinion in China. As for the Embassy bombing, with ve missiles red at the
Embassy in different directions, most Chinese believed that it was not a simple mistake.

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overall negative China coverage. Many ghters for Chinas freedom of the press
during the 1980s now found that the bias in the US media was probably more
persistent because of the existence of a strong cultural hegemony.33 In other words,
the Cold War mentality that persisted with some US politicians and internationa l
news reporters may have ironically stabilized the Chinese regime.
Rank and le intellectuals and students. There was a huge improvement in the
economic well-being of intellectuals and the intellectuals-in-the-makin g (the students) during the 1990s. A change of mentality and a further transformation of
social structures had both contributed to the economic improvement. As I have
discussed elsewhere, during the 1980s, most intellectuals and students did not have
much understandin g of the market economy and were contemptuous about involvement in commercial activities. They also believed that reform would bring them
more political as well as economic bene ts. Therefore, when they saw that the
emerging market economy actually brought down some of their prestige and
economic bene ts, their grievances became pronounced .34
However, as the reform continued , especially after jealously watching other
people become rich day by day, intellectuals gained an understandin g of the market
economy. In the 1990s, especially during the second commercial wave of 1992 and
1993, more and more intellectuals and students detached themselves from traditional intellectual mentalities and got involved in commercial activities or worked
in much better paid private or foreign sectors.35 This also happened among
university students. During the rst commercial wave around 1988, only a few
students ventured to do some businesses on campus. Nevertheless, their activities
were sanctioned by teachers and generally looked down upon by fellow students.
By 1992, doing business or working for others to get some extra money had
become very common practices among students.36 In fact, when I conducted my
interviews on the 1989 movement in 1993, I saw that several student informants
carried pagers. At that time, this was pretty much an indication that these students
were involved in quite serious moneymaking activities. The historical meaning of
this transition cannot be overstated: while the abolishment of the civil service
examination system in 1905 transformed Chinas literati class into intellectuals , the
current commercialism has transformed many people who originally considered
themselves as intellectuals into a modern professional class.37
Mentality changes were not the only factor. Other structural changes in society
33. Jie Chen, Meiguo meiti jiu yiding gongzheng ma? [Is the American media really impartial?] Peoples Daily
Online, (5 June 1999); Xiguang Li and Kang Liu, Yaomohua zhongguo de beihou.
34. Zhao, Reform and Discontent: The Causes of the 1989 Chinese Student Movement, chapter 4.
35. For example, only in 1993, over 300, 000 intellectuals quitted state-sector jobs and started their own businesses.
See Qiang Li, Naoti daogua yu woguo shichang fazhan de liangge jieduan [A reversed income scale between
intellectuals and workers and the two stage developmen t of Chinas market economy], Shehuixue Yanjiu 6, (1996),
pp. 512.
36. Li Xie, Shenshen xuezi zhengqianmang [Students were eager to earn money], Zhongguo Qingnian 3, (1993),
pp. 1618.
37. Chan also found that 10 years after the 1989 movement Chinese students had become much more practical
than they were during the 1980s. See Che-po Chan, The political pragmatism of Chinese university students: 10 years
after the 1989 movement, Journal of Contemporar y China 8(22), (1999), pp. 381403.

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had also contributed to the transformation. During the 1980s, Chinas market
economy was still at a very early stage of development. The collective industries
employed only petty technologies , private businesses were run by people with little
or no education, and very few large-scale high-tech joint ventures and foreign rms
existed in China. The society simply could not provide enough opportunitie s to the
educated class.38 By contrast, in the 1990s, many medium- and large-scale collective and private businesse s emerged in China. Large-scale foreign rms were also
mushrooming. Higher paid white-collar jobs became common in major cities. The
economic boom after 1992 also brought an enormous amount of money to society.
As the whole society became richer, the Chinese were willing to pay more money
to receive education and to consume various forms of cultural products. Moreover,
more big private businesses emerged and more and more private companies were
now controlled by educated people,39 which led to a huge amount of money ying
into the hands of intellectuals and students through donations, sponsorships , and
foundations. 40 In summary, while most intellectuals and students considered themselves as economic losers during the 1980s, they were unquestionabl y winners in
the 1990s. Therefore, they became more interested in making money than in
directly challenging the regime.

The urban residents. On an absolute scale, the living standard of this population
had also improved in the 1990s. However, in comparison with the educated
population , this population bene ted signi cantly less from the economic boom in
the 1990s. 41 Moreover, China started to reform the large-scale state-owned companies in the 1990s. For several reasons, more and more state-owned businesse s
started to lose money and had to lay off workers or even to le bankruptcies. The
uncertainties associated with unemployment, forced early retirement and underemployment were enormous. If we made a mechanical diagnosis of the possible
rebellious forces in urban China in the 1990s, urban workers would certainly be the
candidates. However, for several reasons, although small-scale strikes and riots
broke out frequently in many Chinese cities,42 no countrywid e movements
occurred.
What is immediately noticeable is the fact that Chinese workers were in an
organizational and especially an ideological paucity. After intellectuals became a
rich class, few of them were interested in organizing workers or providing them
with rebellious ideologies. Without grand reasons to rebel, what the dislocated
38. Zhao, Reform and Discontent: The Causes of the 1989 Chinese Student Movement, chapter 4.
39. In the 1980, private businessmen were the least educated population in society. In the 1990s, more and more
large businesses were run by people who formerly considered themselves as intellectuals.
40. Li, Naoti daogua yu woguo shichang fazhan de liangge jieduan.
41. Ibid.
42. Xiaolin Li and Xinyu Fu, Chengqi zaijiuye de baohusan [Expanding the re-employmen t mechanism],
Outlook Weekly 19, (1998), pp. 911; Wenjian Mu, Jianshao laodong tufa shijian de guanjian zainali? [What are
the keys to minimize the worker protests?], Outlook Weekly 30, (1996), p. 21; World Journal, Shenyang xiagang
gongren qingyuan cishu jingren [An astonishing rate of protesting activities by the unemployed workers in
Shenyang], (13 April 1999), p. a7.

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population could do was only to discharge their grievances by small-scale riots and
strikes focusing on immediate economic problems.43
Beyond this, several structural changes also undermined the potential of largescale working class movements. The rst is that even though serious problems
existed in the state-owned businesses, the whole economy was still in good shape.
Therefore, except for in a few rusty-belt industrial cities, in most other places the
younger and more able state sector workers, after being laid off, could nd jobs in
the private sectors. Whom the layoffs hit really hard were those workers who were
at the margins of society even before the layoffs and therefore had the least
capacity to rebel.44 Moreover, even for this population , the situation was not as bad
as their monthly income gures had suggested . This was because in China to
nancially support parents and to help each other within the immediate family is
a norm rather than an exception. As long as one person in a family was doing well,
other family members would somehow bene t. Therefore, many social problems
were alleviated at the family level.
The increasing domination of market mechanisms in social life also contributed
to the lack of working class movements. In the 1980s, Chinese society was
relatively homogeneous and the state still mainly relied on administrativ e measures
in policy implementation. Therefore, a change of state policy often hit the whole
target population , and when things went wrong, millions of people were affected
in a similar way.45 In the 1990s, as the society was more and more diversi ed and
the markets impact became more immediate and society-wide, most peoples
economic well-being was less determined by the state than by the economic
performance of speci c companies. Consequently , many grievances of the Chinese
urban population were now aimed at leaders of a particular factory or rm. This
made a sharp contrast to the situation during the 1980s when most economic
grievances were state centered. In the 1990s, in many local economic con icts, the
state could actually act as a mediator rather than a target of the aggrieved
population . When the state dealt with the issues carefully, local strikers sometimes
even helped to increase the legitimacy of the regime.46
Chinas political future in the early twenty- rst century
I have analyzed several major changes in the Chinese state and society that
contributed to the political stability in the 1990s. An immediate question is whether
the current development will lead to a long-term political stability of the regime.
43. For example, almost all the white-collar workers working in large joint-ventures and foreign rms in China
had an education background that meant they were regarded as intellectuals in China. In my conversations with several
of them, I was surprised to nd that they frequently referred to workers who demonstrated on the street after being
laid off as diaomin, which can be literally translated as cunning and wicked rascals.
44. Seniors and women were highly over-represented in this population.
45. Xueguang Zhou, Unorganized interests and collective action in communist China, American Sociological
Review 58, (1993), pp. 5473.
46. For example, early in 1999 the Changsha municipal governmen t used the police force to repress a recent riot,
which resulted in one death and over 100 injuries. This created a local public outrage. In response, the state immediately
criticized the repression and suspended the citys CCP general secretary. This kind of state action generally discharged
peoples grievances. See World Journal, Changsha shiwei shuji yang baohua bei tingzhi [The Changsha CCP
Secretary Yang Baohua was suspended from his post], (3 April 1999), p. a7.

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My answer to this question is not so positive. Although the Chinese economy still
performs reasonably well, serious socioeconomic problems still exist and perhaps
will mount in the near future. Right now, Chinese state industry is continuousl y
loosing money and the banking system is in a great mess. They will become the
two biggest hurdles to Chinas reform. Because of the scale of the enterprises and
the amount of vested interests involved , problems in reforming the state sector and
the banking system are tremendous. In the case that things go wrong, the released
tensions could easily rock the regime. Moreover, urban China may face an even
bigger labor surplus in the near future. More farmers are migrating to cities to look
for opportunities , unemployment from unpro table state industries is mounting, and
a renewed growth of young population also puts more and more youth into the
labor market.47 Since most of these new laborers will be employed in the rising
private, joint venture and foreign sectors, the government control over urban
residents will further decline.48 Without a good social security system, this
population could also pose a huge challenge to the regime in an economic
downturn. Recently, to stimulate private spending, the Chinese government greatly
expanded the university enrollment. If this policy led to a huge surplus of students,
as was clearly demonstrated by what happened during the 1980s, it could again lead
to a renewed student activism.
Much more can be added to the problems that the Chinese regime may face.
What I want to stress here is that although Chinas statesociety relations have
greatly improved over the past 10 years, the political conditions that underwrote the
rise and shaped the development of the 1989 movement have not been fundamentally eliminated . Without political reform not only is another large-scale social
movement or other political disturbance possible , but should such a movement
start, it could well follow a trajectory similar to that of the 1989 movement.
Many issues are involved . Here, let me limit the discussion to problems
associated with the base of a regimes legitimation . I have argued that after the
1989 movement statesociety relations in China had developed in a way that
minimized the problems that prevailed during the earlier Chinese reform and
contributed to the regimes political stability. However, it can easily be recognized
that many of these changes were brought by improvements in ruling methods
rather than by fundamental changes in the nature of the regime. Till now, the state
has been dominated by a party that clenches tightly onto a communist ideology that
fewer and fewer Chinese take seriously, while the top government leaders, all
belonging to that party, are still not freely elected through a commonly accepted
procedure. Since very few Chinese really believe in communism at present, the
state in reality has to base its legitimacy on moral and economic performance (and
occasionally on nationalism) . A regime that bases its legitimacy on performance,
however, is intrinsicall y unstable. No economy can always be maintained at a high
47. The youth of the 1524 age cohort will grow from 96 million in 2000 to 114 million in 2010 (Jack Goldstone,
personal communication) .
48. For example, Falun Gong is a quasi-religious sect initiated in 1993. By 1999 it claimed millions of followers
and many of them were governmen t and military of cers. However, the state was not even particularly alarmed by
its existence until some members of the sect started several large-scale collective actions in attacking civilians and
media institutions that expressed objections to some practices and claims of the sect. This is certainly an indication
of the weakness of state surveillance over the urban population.

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speed of development. Even if Chinas current economic growth rate could be

maintained for several decades, the regimes political stability would still not be
secured. Currently, the regime enjoys a high level of performance legitimation
because most Chinese still have a vivid memory of the chaotic politics and
miserable experience during Maos era, and thus greatly treasure the more regulated politics and much better life they have now. Therefore, the regimes call for
political stability in the name of economic development has resonated with many
Chinese. What will happen after another 20 years or so when the people who have
rst-hand experience of the Cultural Revolution have grown old? The people by
then may take af uence and stability for granted, and the state will no longer be
able to use them to justify its rule. In any event, when a state bases its legitimacy
on performance, it will be held responsible for it. This would be a great burden for
any performance-based regime.
It could be argued that people will blame the government anyway when social
problems become very serious. Nevertheless, for a political system that contains
multiple political forces (such as multi-party democracy),49 such grievances can be
discharged by a change of government through elections or other routine procedures. As long as a system contains an alternative, it is very dif cult for the people
to be united and ght the system itself. The Chinese state, at least in its current
form, contains no such alternatives. Moreover, because of the states performancebased nature, any challenge to the performance of some top state leaders or speci c
state policies also implies a head-on challenge to the regimes legitimacy. As my
discussion of the interactions between the state and people during the 1989
movement has shown,50 the nature of such oppositio n offers extremely limited
opportunitie s for compromise between the people and the government.
Regardless of a states political nature, repression is a crucial means for the state
to deal with contentious collective actions.51 However, when a state is based on
legalelectoral legitimation , repressionor even a signal of repressionusually
carries a very clear message that is hard for the movement participants to ignore.
Moreover, as long as repression is based on law, even if it is very brutal, the action
can still be perceived as legitimate by the governing elites and by the people who
are observing the movement.52 However, in a country where the state is based on
moral legitimation , peoples judgment on political issues is also based on morality.53 As the development of the 1989 movement shows, legal codes convey little
meaning in a morally based political system.54 The situation is even worse when a
49. Here, I assume that all political forces accept the same rule of the game and compete only for the of ce not
the ideology.
50. See Zhao, State legitimacy, state policy, and the development of the 1989 Beijing Student Movement.
51. See Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (New York: Random House, 1978).
52. For example, in the United States, the elites and the majority of the population seldom questioned the legitimacy
of government repression during the early stages of working class movement s and of the Civil Rights Movement.
53. See Zhao, State legitimacy, state policy, and the developmen t of the 1989 Beijing Student Movement;
Statesociety relations and patterns of activities during the 1989 Beijing Student Movement.
54. I observed a demonstration in front of the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa after the 4 June military repression in
1989. Some students decided to lead others to rush into the embassy. There were only several policemen in front of
the embassy, walking back and forth to create a space between the demonstrators and the building. However, each
time these students ran toward the embassy, the policemen stopped them by just raising their hands to show
disapproval . I was surprised by the effectiveness of the gesture here, since in Beijing, before the repression, hundred s

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social movement challenges a moral-based regime on moral terms. As is well

illustrated by the development of the 1989 movement, any state control measures
were then seen as immoral by the people and thus undermined the regimes
legitimation base.55
Therefore, once a large-scale social movement breaks out, a state such as the
current China in fact has very little means of con ict resolution. Often, the state is
left with only two choices: surrender or repression. As what happened in the former
Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries has clearly shown, the younger
generation of communist leaders, with no revolutionary experience, are unlikely to
defend the regime with bloody military repression as the Chinese leaders did during
the 1989 movement. Thus, the former Soviet Union broke down so quickly that it
left a power vacuum to be occupied by the Ma a, traditional forces as well as
democratic forces, making the transition to democracy very painful.
That a performance-based regime is intrinsicall y unstable, and that such a
regime, once it faces political challenges, has great dif culty containing them, is
indeed bad news for the current Chinese leaders. Therefore, the current Chinese
leaders should place political reform at the top of the agenda. This is not to suggest
that China should copy any particular form of Western political system. However,
such a political reform has to aim at changing the foundation of state power from
ideology and performance legitimation to legalelectoral legitimation . It should
minimally include formally abandoning Marxism as a state ideology, reorganizing
the communist party into a socialist party, establishin g an independent legal system,
and gradually institutin g competitive elections with candidates competing only for
the of ce rather than for mutually incompatible ideologies.
In the report to the Fifteenth Congress of the CCP Central Committee delivered
by Jiang Zemin in September 1997, there is a section on political reform.
Although much of the section is limited to legal and administrative reform (that is,
reform on the organizations and functions of government and public institutions) ,
the report triggered a surge of democratic discourse in China.56 In recent publications, Chinese scholars have examined such problems in China as bad credit,
over-investment in the housing market, capital out ows, increasing income disparities, abuse of law, corruption, and the violation of basic human rights. They
believe that most of the problems are related to of cial corruption and the lack of
checks and balances of government power through legal, public opinion and
electoral channels. They argue that Chinas economic reform has developed to a
stage where democratization has become an absolute necessity. Right now, most of
these books were intended as friendly recommendations to the state. However, as
has been repeatedly demonstrated in the history of twentieth century China, such
Footnote 54 continued

of warnings from the state were unable to move the students out of Tiananmen Square. I was fascinated by the
effectiveness of a state control measure when it was backed by a law above the government .
55. See Zhao, State legitimacy, state policy, and the development of the 1989 Beijing Student Movement.
56. See Yuyu Dong and Binhai Shi, eds, Zhengzhi zhongguo [Political China] (Beijing: Jinri Zhongguo Chubanshe ,
1998); Zhijun Ling and Licheng Ma, Five Voices in Present China (Guangzhou : Guangzho u Chubanshe , 1999);
Zuoxiang Liu, Maixiang minzhu yu fazhi de guodu [China: Marching toward Democracy and the Rule of Law] (Jinan:
Shandong Renmin Chubanshe , 1999); Daying Wu and Haijiao Yang, You zhonggu o tese de shehuizhuy i minzhu
zhengzhi [A Socialist Democracy with Chinese Characteristics] (Beijing: Shehui Kexue Wenxian Chubanshe , 1999).

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a loyal oppositio n can easily be radicalized when the intellectual elites are
frustrated either by a hardliner state reaction or by emerging social problems in
society.
Fortunately, these publication s are still openly circulated in China, indicating that
the government has at least been tolerating the discussion. In fact, the top state
leaders themselves may be well aware of the problems with which they are
confronted. Because of their experience of the 1989 movement, they, however,
perceive great danger in a political reformthe danger of a sudden and total
collapse of the government in the face of a rising disloyal opposition . Therefore,
the government has so far relied mainly on legal and administrativ e reforms as a
solution to existing problems. Legal and administrativ e reforms certainly combat
some social problems. The reforms will also prepare modern institutions such as
a more robust legal system, a professional bureaucracy and interest-based civil
associationscrucial to a successful democratic transition.57 Nevertheless, I cannot
foresee how legal and administrativ e reforms could change the foundation of state
legitimation from ideology and performance to legal-election. I suspect that the
success of legal and administrative reforms will actually make the communist
ideology and authoritarianis m even less relevant to Chinese society, which may
further undermine the regimes legitimacy in the longer run. Therefore, while legal
and administrativ e reforms are absolutely necessary, they are not substitute s for
more fundamental political reforms.
Few top state leaders are willing to instigate a political reform of which they
themselves are among the rst victims. Therefore, timing is extremely important.
The democratic transition in both South Korea and Taiwan started in the late
1980s. 58 The democratic transition in South Korea was initiated by large-scale
student demonstrations that toppled the regime, while Taiwans transition started
when the economy was in a good shape and dissident forces were still well
contained . Consequently , the Nationalist Party in Taiwan was able to control and
bene t from the initial democratization process. For a country of Chinas size,
regional diversities and scale of problems, if a political reform starts in the
middle of economic crisis and social upheaval, opposition s may not only blow
away the existing political forces but also unleash separate nationalism and other
traditiona l forces which would bring not only disaster to China, but also possibly
to the whole world. A successful political reform has to be timed when it is not too
little, too late.

57. Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, eds, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1978); Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation; Adam Przeworski,
Democracy and Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991).
58. See Edward Friedman, ed., The Politics of Democratization : Generalizing East Asian Experiences (Boulder,
CO: Westview Press, 1994); Alan M. Wachman, Taiwan: National Identity and Democratization (Armonk, NY:
Sharpe, 1994).

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Summary
In this paper, I analyze Chinas prolonged political stability in the 1990s as well
as Chinas political future in the early twenty- rst century. I argue that Chinas
political stability was brought about by several major changes in statesociety
relations, and much of it was related to the 1989 movement. For the state, after the
1989 movement, several idealistic top leaders incompetent in dealing with crisis
politics were replaced by reformist top leaders with a Machiavellian sense of
politics. As a result of the new leadership, dissident activities were removed from
the public attention and the economy sustained a high and stable growth rate. For
the society, while the 1989 repression drove radical intellectuals out of the country,
the continued reform facilitated the rise of a new professiona l class whose members
were more interested in expanding public space than in directly challenging the
state. While intellectuals and students were economically losers during the 1980s,
they became winners in the 1990s. Therefore, although urban protests and riots
were everywhere in China in recent years, without the supply of grand ideologies
from intellectua l elites, the protests remained local. Market forces in the 1990s also
penetrated into China more deeply and the state no longer took charge of
everything as it used to be. Consequently , personal grievances were no longer
predominantly state-centered and politics partially localized .
Although Chinas statesociety relations underwent a great change, many
changes were brought about by an improvement in ruling methods rather than by
fundamental changes in the nature of the regime. At present, the state still clings
to an ideology that is increasingly less relevant to Chinese, and in reality bases its
legitimacy on moral and economic performance. This paper argues that once a state
bases its legitimacy on performance, it is also held responsible for it. Such a regime
is thus intrinsicall y unstable. To avoid similar national tragedies such as the blood y
confrontation during the 1989 movement, the current Chinese leaders should place
political reform on their agenda, and the political reform must aim at changing the
foundation of state power from ideology and performance legitimation to legal
electoral legitimation .

444