China's Trapped Transition_ The Limits of Developmental Autocracy - Minxin Pei [4]
On the positive side, the post-Mao regime has put an end to mass terror and significantly curtailed the reach of the state into society. Personal freedom and social mobility have both expanded substantially; limited alternative channels of political participation have been opened; and autonomous civic organizations are allowed to exist and function outside the political sphere.24 At the elite level, the post-Mao leadership has also restored the most basic institutional norms and procedures required of a stable government, thus contributing to relative elite cohesiveness and political stability during the reform cra.25 The need to promote economic reform and social stability has motivated the regime to implement a limited program of legal reform that has begun to have some impact on political, economic, and social behavior in China.26
Another trend in the development of incipient institutional pluralism is the growing role of the National People’s Congress (the national legislature) and local legislatures in policy-making. Originally conceived as a necessary step to restore the constitutional order devastated by the Cultural Revolution, the strengthening of the legislative branch of the government has acquired a political momentum of its own. Consequently, China’s legislature has become increasingly assertive of its constitutional prerogatives and gained considerable political stature.27 Modest progress has been made even in the area of democratic participation. Although the post-Mao regime has suppressed the demands of systematic democratic reforms, it was forced, by the political necessity of maintaining order in rural areas, to permit the election of village committees as de facto governments of the basic administrative units in the countryside. As a new political institution that began as a limited experiment in the late 1980s, village elections had become an established practice by the end of the 1990s and received full official sanction. Although village elections have not produced effective local democratic governance in many areas where they have been held, they represent the first step, however small and tentative, toward expanded political participation in an authoritarian regime.28
These signs of limited political opening, unfortunately, have yet to alter the defining characteristics of the post-Mao regime as a one-party autocracy. In many ways, these changes have been tolerated largely because they do not represent a direct challenge to the monopoly of power of the CCP. Indeed, these changes are compatible with the short-term objectives of the party. Thus, political reform under the rule of the CCP can occur only within the strict limits imposed by the party. In practical terms, these limits have stunted the development of an effective legal system, constrained the constitutional role of the legislative branch, obstructed the growth of rural self-government, and restricted the emergence of a civil society. Thus, to most outside observers, post-Mao political reform is, at worst, an oxymoron and, at best, a series of tentative, partial, and superficial measures most likely to fail because they in no way challenge, limit, or undermine the Communist Party’s political monopoly. A democratic transition under the rule of the CCP thus seems a distant, or even unrealistic, prospect.29
Transition Trapped?
The combination of market reforms and preservation of a one-party state creates contradictions and paradoxes, the implications of which the ruling clites have cither chosen to ignore or arc reluctant to face directly. For example, the market-oriented economic policies, pursued in a context of exclusionary politics and predatory practices, make the CCP increasingly resemble a self-serving ruling elite, and not a proletarian party serving the interests of the working people.
Commenting on the CCP’s transformation, the deposed former general secretary of the CCP, Zhao Ziyang, perceptively