Word: communist
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Sixty years ago Mao Zedong stood before a sea of people atop Tiananmen Gate proclaiming, in his high-pitched Hunan dialect, the founding of the People's Republic of China and that the "Chinese people have stood up!" The moment was marked with pride and hope. The communists' victory had vanquished the Nationalist regime, withstood the vicious onslaught of the Japanese invasion and overturned the century of foreign encroachment on China's territory. Moreover, Mao and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) came to power without significant external support - theirs was largely a homegrown revolution. (See pictures of the making...
...economic reforms and China had normalized its place in the world after its post-Tiananmen isolation. Politics, however, remained frozen and the heavy hand of the state remained evident. Only during the present decade, in the waning years of Jiang Zemin's rule and under Hu Jintao, has the Communist Party begun to experiment with very limited political reforms. My discussions with those party officials involved with crafting the "democratic" reforms makes clear that there are strict boundaries to how far they will proceed...
...Chinese intellectual life has also improved, although over time this remains one of the real dark spots of Chinese communist rule. For six decades intellectuals have been persecuted, harassed and forced to conform and create within various boundaries set by the state. They continually probe the boundaries - until the state pushes back. Despite continuing controls, public and private discourse in China has never been so free. The blogosphere and Internet are alive with unbridled discussion - unless and until it crosses the state censor's invisible hand. (Read "Avoiding Censors, Chinese Authors Go Online...
...whole, the Communist Party has proven itself to be remarkably adaptable and open to borrowing elements from different countries and political systems. As a result it is becoming a hybrid party with elements of East Asian neo-authoritarianism, Latin American corporatism and European social democracy all grafted to Confucianist-Leninist roots. The uprising in Tiananmen and across China in 1989 and the subsequent collapse of communist systems in Europe and the Soviet Union were instructive experiences for the CCP. Many lessons were drawn, but the principal one was to remain flexible and adaptable, not dogmatic and rigid. (Read "Beijing Clamps...
...Shambaugh is professor and director of the China Policy Program at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and currently a visiting scholar at the China Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. His latest book is China's Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation...