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central government has maintained a surprisingly high level of authority in the eyes of ordinary citizens. This suggests a relatively low probability for social protest movements, however numerous, frequent, and violent, to explode into large-scale, highly organized, and cross-regional groups intent upon the overthrow of the CCP. The CCP may also draw some comfort from survey findings that suggest that, on the whole, the majority of Chinese citizens were unlikely to participate in violent antiregime activities. In two tracking polls conducted in 2000 and 2001, a large majority of the respondents were willing to allow the government, the news media, and the courts to resolve their problems. A large minority (around 30 percent) would only complain privately. Only a small minority (although a sizable one in the countryside) would resort to protest or even violence. In 2001, about 6 percent said that they would participate in collective petitions and demonstrations, and 1 percent would participate in strikes. In 2000, more people were leaning toward the protest/violence options, with almost 12 percent in the cities and 20 percent in the countryside choosing the collective petitions and demonstrations option. About 3 percent would take part in strikes. Significantly, 4 percent of the urban respondents and 6 percent of the rural respondents would seek private revenge.182

It would be wrong to dismiss deteriorating governance and its effects on social unrest as inconsequential. Left ignored, deteriorating governance will lead to a vicious cycle. In the Chinese case, the massive accumulation of governance deficits—and systemic risks—threatens the sustainability of China’s neoauthoritarian development strategy. As the analysis of this study shows, the build-up of governance deficits is an inevitable product of the transition strategy and policies adopted by the CCP. The party’s resistance to substantive and meaningful democratic reforms has led to the breakdown of accountability deterioration of internal norms, and exclusion of large segments of Chinese society from political participation. Unaccountable to the public, the ruling elites have pursued policies that are more likely to advance their personal political careers than increase social returns. The strategy of gradualist economic: reform has created large pockets of rents and left untouched the party’s extensive patronage system within the economy. The costs of protecting the rents and the patronage network are eventually borne by the public at large, in the form of the diversion of resources, which could be used to deliver more public goods, to a relatively small group of loyalists in the party. The emergence of a decentralized predatory state, with pervasive corruption and collusion, has caused local governance to deteriorate even further.

The accumulation of governance deficits places potential reformers in a difficult dilemma. As a rule, regimes enfeebled by misrule lack the political capital and confidence to undertake bold reforms to stop the rot inside the system. Inaction and procrastination, not risk-taking, tend to prevail. Even for forward-looking reformers, opening up the political systems with a large buildup of governance deficits presents an insurmountable challenge. Resistance from regime insiders who benefit from bad governance will likely be fierce while a mass popular political mobilization, similar to glasnost under Gorbachev in the former Soviet Union, will most probably precipitate a quick regime collapse because the political system is simply too brittle to pass the stress test of real political reforms.

Conclusion

BY FOCUSING on the critical weaknesses of the Chinese political system in general, and on many of the hidden costs of China’s transition from communism in particular, this book attempts to show the limits of a developmental autocracy. Despite its awe-inspiring economic growth and progress, a set of self-destructive dynamics is weakening China’s most vital political institutions—the state and the ruling party. Lagging behind the