With a global trend toward democracy plus its remarkable success at economic development the question often arises whether China will make commensurate progress in democratization. There have been a few hopeful signs at the local level, including some competitive elections, but even there democratization is limited. Unrest has been growing among peasants and others left behind by economic progress and frustrated by corruption and lack of political responsiveness. At the national level there are some indications that toleration for dissent, essential for democracy, is actually decreasing. What are the obstacles to democratization in China? Are there now more pressures for democratization because of the vast expansion of education and the middle class? Is it possible China could experience top-down democratization initiated by the Communist authorities as happened throughout much of the former Soviet Bloc?
Bio
Dr. Cheng Chen
Assistant Professor of Political Science, State University of New York at Albany
Sijin Cheng
China Analyst at the Eurasia Group and PhD candidate, Boston University
Dr. Andrew J. Nathan
Class of 1919 Professor and Chair of Political Science at Columbia University
Dr. James H. Nolt
Senior Fellow, World Policy Institute and Adjunct Professor of Political Science, The New School
Dr. Yan Sun
Professor of Political Science at the Graduate Center and Queens College, City University of New York
Political party founded in China in 1921 by Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao, Mao Zedong, and others. It grew directly from the reform-oriented May Fourth Movement and was aided from the start by Russian organizers. Under Russian guidance, the CCP held its First Congress in 1921; the Russians also invited many members to the Soviet Union for study and encouraged cooperation with the Chinese Nationalist Party. This cooperation lasted until 1927, when the communists were expelled. CCP fortunes declined rapidly after several failed attempts at uprisings, and the few members that remained fled to central China to regroup, where they formed a Soviet-style government in Jiangxi. Harried by the Nationalist army under Chiang Kai-shek, the CCP forces undertook the Long March to northwestern China, when Mao Zedong became the party's undisputed leader. War with the Japanese broke out in 1937 and led to a temporary alliance between the CCP and the Nationalists. After World War II, the CCP participated in U.S.-mediated talks with the Nationalists, but in 1947 the talks were abandoned and civil war resumed. The CCP increased its already strong rural base through land redistribution, and in 1949 it took control of mainland China. In the decades that followed, the party undertook extensive reforms, but pragmatic policies alternated with revolutionary campaignsnotably the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. After Mao's death in 1976, the party moved steadily toward economic liberalization. Today the CCP sets policy, which government officials implement. The organs at the top of the CCP are the Political Bureau, the Political Bureau's Standing Committee, and the Secretariat. See alsoLin Biao; Zhou Enlai; Deng Xiaoping.