Political Science in China: A New State of Siege

Abstract

A year has passed since the prodemocracy demonstators in Beijing's Tiananmen Square captthred the attention of the world and sparked a season of historic political change throughout the communist world. Unlike their counterparts in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union however, the millions of Chinese intellectuals, students, and workers who took to the streets throughout China last spring in the name of political reform were prevented from continuing their struggle by a brutal government crackdown against the on June 4th. 1 According to the government, patriotic demonstrations had become a counter-revolutionary rebellion which threatened the capacity of the Chinese state to govern. Today the demonstrators and the tanks have been removed from Tiananmen Square. Martial law has been lifted from Beijing and only non-uniformed security officers still lurk in the shadows of Beijing's streets and hutongs. Since the beginning of last summer the Chinese government has assured the world that daily life in China has returned to normal. Indeed, one also has a sense that U.S. relations with the P.R.C. are also beginning to approximate normalcy. Western investment in China's ailing economy is growing again, many of the mild sanctions originally imposed by the Bush Administration against China have been relaxed, and high level members of the Bush Administration have traveled to China to meet secretly and in public with Chinese leaders. But despite appearances all is not normal, especially not for China's social scientists. The discipline of political science in China played a major role in facilitating and encouraging the momentous events which transpired last spring.2 Ironically, the development of political science was directly encouraged by the Communist Party to help address China's problems of political modernization and reform. Now, political science and other social science disciplines are condemned by the government for helping to instigate the so-called counter-revolutionary rebellion. As a result, political science in China is under a new state of siege. Numerous social scientists have been arrested or put on most wanted