Why Does China Not Democratize Yet?

Abstract

Wealth into Power: The Communist Party's Embrace of China's Private Sector. By J. Dickson Bruce. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 292 pp. $24.99 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-521-70270-6). There has been a debate over the past two decades over whether and/or how China would democratize. While some scholars, by referring to modernization theory, are optimistic about the democratization in China, seeing China's move toward democracy as an automatic and natural process following its economic liberalization, economic development, and social change (Rowen 1996, 2001; Diamond 1999; Hu 2000; Gilley 2004; Inglehart and Welzel 2005), others are more pessimistic about the likelihood of China's move toward democracy in the short run, focusing on the various existing constraints that prevent China from becoming democracy for the foreseeable future (Nathan 2003; Pei 2006; Shambaugh 2008). Bruce J. Dickson's book, Wealth into Power: The Communist Party's Embrace of China's Private Sector , is a most recent contribution to this ongoing debate. By examining the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)'s support of the private sector as an important part of its economic reforms, Dickson concludes that by embracing the private sector and co-opting entrepreneurs into the existing authoritarian system, the CCP has managed to survive the rising pressure for democracy, contrary to the expectation of many observers influenced by modernization theory. Dickson's book is an interesting, well-researched and well-structured study of the issue of China's democratization and democracy, a subject that intrigues a large number of Western scholars and practitioners as well as Western …