SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This chapter examines the search the Communist Party leadership undertook for a non-democratic development model after 1997, and its implications. The political situation in China after Deng was laid down well in advance. Jiang's emergence out of Deng's shadow after the latter's death as the real leader of China, in a sense, marked a return of the Communist Party system to what it was supposed to be after it seized power in 1949. China's post-Deng leaders have sought a twenty-first century development model that differs from Western liberal democracy. While post-Deng governance reforms in China have certainly enhanced the capacity of the Communist Party and the Chinese government to direct economic development and maintain order and stability, it is too early to say how effective and sustainable such changes will be beyond the immediate future. Aside from post-Deng China, the Singaporean government under the People's Action Party (PAP) appears to be the only notable exception to the law of probabilities.