One cannot help thinking that the present political regime, directed by a single party which, despite all its metamorphoses, still claims to be communist, will, eventually, disappear. This does not mean that any break with the present political system and, in particular, any transition to democracy should be ruled out. For a multiplicity of reasons its path has been different and is likely to continue to be. However, does a move to another system necessarily translate into a transition to democracy? Is it not possible that China might once again innovate and succeed in emerging from communism by means of an evolution towards a more flexible but stabilised authoritarianism, consultative yet elitist and corporatist, endowed with a certain legal modernity but not with the rule of law and still only partially institutionalised? In short, might not China be evolving towards what I would be tempted to call “enlightened” but plutocratic authoritarianism? Top of pageġWhat does the future hold for the Chinese political regime? 1 This is a particularly difficult question to answer, as China, more than many other countries, has evolved in an atypical way, both when it was a totalitarian state and since the death of Mao Zedong, and especially since the end of the Cold War and of European communism 2. That changes introduced within the system might eventually favour a change of system cannot be ruled out. Moreover the numerous social and economic as well as international constraints-such as maintaining its position vis-à-vis the United States-which China must overcome, as well as the “class” interests of the political and economic elites that lead the country, militate against any quick escape from authoritarianism. Since the launch of the reforms in 1979, most striking has been China’s tremendous ability to adapt to-and therefore to resist-the Communist Party, its leadership and its nomenklatura, as an institution exercising political power in a monopolistic fashion and seeking to preserve this monopoly while maintaining an increasingly plutocratic grip on the most strategic segments of the economy.
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