China in the Post-Deng Era (review)

Deng Xiaoping's death on February 19, 1997, certainly marked the end of an era in contemporary China. In view of his preeminent role in China's development, China in the post-Deng era has attracted much academic and media interest. This is because most of the first-generation revolutionary leaders have, by the mid 1990s, passed from the scene, and the third-generation leaders are now firmly in power. At the same time, economic reforms since 1978 have reached a plateau, and a new impetus is called for in order to maintain the momentum of economic growth.

In the light of these significant changes, Joseph Cheng has assembled a team of experts to review developments in China and suggest what needs to be done in the future. These experts come from Hong Kong, China, Australia, and the United States. Each author deals with a specific policy area, and his/her chapter covers the following topics: (1) what has been achieved since 1978; (2) an evaluation of the policies and reforms thus far with an emphasis on what needs to be done in the future; (3) the plans of Chinese leaders for further reforms and changes and the author's evaluation of such plans; and (4) the impact of Deng's passing on the leadership succession.

In this volume, the experts on political issues generally are pessimistic about the prospects for post-Deng China. In Joseph Cheng's introduction, it is pointed out that the succession to the first generation of leaders is most unstable as the process is not yet fully institutionalized. Thus, "the leadership line up immediately after Deng may well change dramatically in just one year, and may become almost entirely different in three to five years" (p. 1). Likewise, Willy Wo-Lap Lam argues that Deng's failure to modernize the leadership structure could mean a period of uncertainty and instability now that the patriarch is gone. In late 1995 there were already signs of a power struggle looming and of Jiang Zemin gravitating toward Marxist orthodoxy and the old tools of the dictatorship of the proletariat to maintain power.

According to Graham Young, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has undergone ideological and organizational decay. The CCP is plagued by a lack of discipline and organizational weakness. It has lost any persuasive ideological position that could have justified its claim to "leadership." The members are seen as self-serving and enmeshed in pervasive corruption. The Party generally has low standing among the people and is the object of hatred among important groups.

There is also the problem of growing inequality in China. Joseph Cheng points out that some regions and some segments of society have suffered from a fall in real income. As a result, Deng's passing and the struggle for power may further erode the regime's authority; and corruption, abuses of power by cadres, and serious inflation will be the catalysts for social turmoil.

Furthermore, there seems to have been a trend toward authoritarianism in China. Examining major ideological trends, David Kelly reports that 1995 was a year of renewed intellectual repression and of prominent displays of indifference toward international norms of human rights and democratic accountability. He believes that the impending struggle for succession to the paramount leadership has brought on an intellectual ice age comparable to the China of 1975 and 1976.

A few analysts, however, feel that the sluggishness in the movement toward political reform may not be a bad thing for China. For example, Yanqi Tong argues that the authoritarian regime in China has done an admirable job in guiding the transition to a market economy. Considering the comprehensiveness of such an economic transition and the social costs associated with it, social unrest and political instability have been well within a manageable range. Tong further points out that by the mid 1990s democratization was less likely to be seen as the immediate solution to the socioeconomic...