Legislative development (or decay) is a component of political change. 1 In nations with weak legislatures just as in those with strong legislatures, growth or decline of an assembly’s institutional importance alters the pattern of rule. In socialist systems, in particular, the health of a legislature reveals much about the state of mass-elite relations and the division of tasks among government organs. When a socialist legislature is impotent or ignored, lawmaking, supervision, representation, and regime support functions are dispensed with or carried out elsewhere. When a legislature is rising and active, it assumes a range of responsibilities and may serve as a testing ground to develop and refine techniques of rule. In China, the ups and downs of the National People’s Congress (NPC) have coincided with changes in the policymaking environment and have heralded (or reflected) changes in the way leaders interact with the citizenry and with each other. Throughout its history, the NPC has been a window on evolving party-society and party-state relations which has shed light on the broad character of the Chinese polity-how open or closed it is, how exclusive or inclusive it may be becoming.* In one institution, in miniature, the forces of change and continuity have met and interacted. At different times, reform or reaction has prevailed. But the underlying question, posed at the end of the Qing dynasty and still troubling to this day, has remained the same: what reforms must be instituted to build China into a strong and prosperous nation? Through our legislative window, three separate but intersecting alternatives can be discerned. First, the path of liberalization. Advocates of liberalization have achieved notoriety on three separate occasions-in the 191Os, during the Hundred Flowers Movement in the mid-1950s, and in the first few years of the post-Mao thaw. In the legislature their ascendance has been marked by lively criticism and calls for structural reform. Liberal reformers, at various points, have sought to limit central power and to transform the legislature from a “rubber stamp” into an institution with an established place in the policymaking process. They have envisioned outside control over leaders and regular influence over policy: they have aimed to build a legislature that has the wherewithal to veto misguided policies and the power to remove incompetent or immoral leaders. They have sought to strengthen the nation by diffusing power. When allowed, liberals have urged leaders to be more responsive and have championed electoral reform and elite accountability; they have supported close legislator-constituent ties and active representation of individual, partial, and national interests. Despite repeated defeats, several