ABSTRACT
The commonplace term for the vast changes that have taken place in China since 1978 is “reform”–an appropriate term insofar as it refers to aspects of the process by which these transformations have occurred: change has been pursued gradually and without violence. But “reform” can hardly capture the depth and breadth of the substance of China’s many changes. Since 1978 China has not merely been tinkering with, perfecting, or toning down Maoist state socialism. Something far more thoroughgoing is afoot. The country has been seeking, often successfully, to excise, root and branch, many of the basic elements of its Maoist polity, economy, society, and political culture. It has questioned almost everything that went before. Its leaders and people have sought to create unprecedented new forms of political authority, economic activity, social organization, and cultural expression. If, as Theda Skocpol argues, revolution is defined as a “basic transformation of a society’s state and class structures,” then what China has been undergoing is no mere “reform,” but rather something that would more aptly be called a peaceful revolution. Another, perhaps less oxymoronic, term to capture China’s gradual and peaceful process toward “basic transformation of … state and class structures” is “structural reform.”
