With the death of Deng Xiaoping, China's political future is once again in the spotlight. Debate over the viability of the current political regime in China started immediately after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown when the prospects for reform in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the fate of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) projected by China watchers were then overwhelmingly pessimistic (Ditmer 1989; Swaine 1989). Eight years after the Tiananmen Square events, the survival of the CCP against all odds (including the aftermath of the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union) is in itself no small miracle. The post-Tiananmen political regime in China has by and large been stable. Not only has the CCP survived, it has made impressive economic progress in recent years. This new development has caused a major reassessment of the situation in the PRC among China watchers. Nicholas Kristoff, in the New York Times (1993), called the phenomenon of China's rapid economic growth in an authoritarian environment the “riddle of China.” One China specialist even posed the question whether China is where Samuel Huntington's “third wave” stopped and whether the PRC would be an exception to the fall of communism worldwide (Nathan 1993).

The most often cited factors accounting for the political tranquillity in the PRC are its remarkable economic growth and its political oppression (Nathan 1993). These two factors are certainly indispensable in understanding developments in China after 1989.