A leading scholar of China's modern political development examines the changing relationship between the Chinese people and the state. Correcting the conventional view of China as having instituted extraordinary economic changes but having experienced few political reforms in the post-Mao period, Merle Goldman details efforts by individuals and groups to assert their political rights.

China's move to the market and opening to the outside world have loosened party controls over everyday life and led to the emergence of ideological diversity. Starting in the 1980s, multi-candidate elections for local officials were held, and term limits were introduced for communist party leaders. Establishment intellectuals who have broken away from party patronage have openly criticized government policies. Those intellectuals outside the party structures, because of their participation in the Cultural Revolution or the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations, have organized petitions, published independent critiques, formed independent groups, and even called for a new political system.

Despite the party's repeated attempts to suppress these efforts, awareness about political rights has been spreading among the general population. Goldman emphasizes that these changes do not guarantee movement toward democracy, but she sees them as significant and genuine advances in the assertion of political rights in China.

Bachrach Photography

Merle Goldman is Professor of History, Emerita, at Boston University and Associate of the John K. Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, Harvard University.

Read More by Merle Goldman:

• China: A New History, Enlarged Edition
• The Paradox of China's Post-Mao Reforms
• China's Intellectuals and the State: In Search of a New Relationship
• Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era
• Sowing the Seeds of Democracy in China: Political Reform in the Deng Xiaoping Era
• Historical Perspectives on Contemporary East Asia
• China's Intellectuals: Advise and Dissent
• Literary Dissent in Communist China
• Ideas Across Cultures: Essays on Chinese Thought in Honor of Benjamin I. Schwartz
• Science and Technology in Post-Mao China
• Changing Meanings of Citizenship in Modern China
• China: A New History, Second Enlarged Edition
• Grassroots Political Reform in Contemporary China