Suchergebnisse

Theoretical framework--back to modernization -- The Maoist legacy--origins of the political structural reform -- Restructuring the party/state polity in the 1980s -- The cyclical process of political structural reform -- The post-Tiennanmen retrenchment -- Stability and reform : politics in the 1990s -- Marketization, liberalization and democratization -- Democracy and democratization

Liao Zhengzhi, the late director of the Office of Hong Kong and Macau Affairs, once said that on the resumption of Hong Kong's sovereignty, Hong Kong needed only to change the flag and British governor. While the press was full of doomsday prophecies about Hong Kong's future, there was a camp of "super-paradox" theorists who genuinely believed that Hong Kong's status quo would not change after the handover. The authoritarian one party-dominated PRC, they asserted, could absorb a free-flowing Hong Kong without changing the nature of an open society. Contrary to doomsday prophets and "super-paradox" theorists, this article argues that while the doomsday prophecy was groundless, important institutional changes did take place even though they were barely noticed. It is argued, by using the example of the legislation of Article 23, that a gradual approach has been adopted by the Chinese Communist Party to change the fundamentals of Hong Kong's polity, a strategy that I call "Leninist integration". (Asian Perspect/GIGA)

Abstract: Contrary to the widely-held belief that the term "political structural reform" was introduced in the early 1980s, in fact, the term was coined by the Chinese leadership only in the mid-1980s. Before then, the senior Chinese party-state leaders used various terms to denote the reform process in the party-state decision-making machinery and apparatus, such as superstructural reform, party-state leadership reform, and perfecting the socialist political system. Moreover, China's political structural reform in the 1980s embraced five dimensions, namely democratizing the party-state apparatus and process; arranging for a smooth leadership succession; streamlining and rationalizing the party-state bureaucracy; strengthening the National People's Congress; and liberalizing intellectual life. The sociopolitical consequences of the reform were tremendous, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) being transformed from a country of totalistic communist-party control into an authoritarian state with an embyronic civil society. Despite the sweeping reform, the "four cardinal principles" enunciated by Deng Xiaoping in 1979 served as an structural constraint on political structural reform.

After discussing the evolution of the notion of political structural reform in the first half of the 1980s, the author examines the substance of the political reform policies and their implications and consequences. He also looks at the limitations of the reform measures. (DÜI-Sen)