Chapter 9 focuses on the Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao administrations which followed Deng Xiaoping’s death in 1997, with particular attention paid to the lasting influence of the so-called “Shanghai clique” of high-level Party leaders who supported the outspoken Jiang and his conservative political, economic, and cultural policies in opposition to the more liberal and mild-mannered Hu. In contrast with Jiang, particular emphasis is placed on a Wikileaks “Cablegate” document from the US State Department in which Hu is described as having taken his cues from the business world, having more in common with a chairman of the board than Chairman of the Communist Party. Accordingly, Jiang is shown to have laid much of the groundwork for China’s two major developments in the international political sphere which took place under Hu: joining the World Trade Organization in 2001 and hosting the Summer Olympics in Beijing in 2008, just one month before the outbreak of the global financial crisis of that year. Jiang’s perception as a conservative is challenged with reference to both of these developments, and also to increasing openness to foreign investment. Loosening of media and cultural controls with the arrival of the Internet, are contrasted with repression of the Falun Gong religious group and of ethnic minority groups in Tibet, and Jiang’s “Three Represents” policy is compared to Hu’s “Scientific Outlook on Development” and “Eight Honors, Eight Shames”. The chapter concludes with an exploration of the challenges of the Hu era which were passed on to his successor, Xi Jinping.

Over its long reign, the Qing imperial state aggressively pursued unauthorized religion, both to uphold its own spiritual hegemony, and to avert religious militarization. With growing social dislocation over the nineteenth century, the dynasty faced a massive explosion of religious violence – a seemingly irrepressible series of millenarian “White Lotus” movements in central China, Muslim uprisings in the north and southwest, and the pseudo-Christian Taiping Rebellion that divided the country for more than a decade. Together, these rebellions and their suppression claimed the lives of tens of millions. The anti-Christian Boxer Uprising was brutally extirpated by a coalition of foreign forces, but at least as deadly were the waves of recriminations between Chinese villages. After coming to power in 1949, the Communist regime moved quickly to contain religion, expelling Catholic missionaries and initiating a suppression of native groups like Yiguandao. Policy towards religion appeared to soften in the 1990s, and yet remained highly vigilant towards any hint of millenarianism or religious sedition. Even knowing this, few observers were prepared for the sheer brutality of the 1999 campaign against Falungong (Dharma Wheel Practice).