CIAO DATE: 6/03

Chinese State, Chinese Society: Facing a New Century

Jae Ho Chung and Zhang Ye

April 2003

Brookings Institution

 

Abstract

Editor's Note: This joint essay examines the twin sets of challenges that will face the Chinese Communist Party over the next few years. One set requires sustaining the economic and social reform of the past two decades and stimulating economic growth and a rising standard of living for a significant share of the population. The other is to cope with the consequences that reform and growth have also unleashed: unregulated social forces and income inequality. In the first part of the essay, Jae Ho Chung looks at this complex set of issues more from the perspective of the Communist state as it seeks to sustain reform but maintain stability. In the second half, Zhang Ye offers the vantage point of the social forces for whom reform has not brought immediate benefits and the emergence of a Chinese civil society. Although Chung and Zhang have different points of departure and foci, they complement each other in their view that political reform cannot lag behind social and economic change.

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