1989 et la bifurcation de la trajectoire économique chinoise

The contrast between the permanence of the regime and the thoroughgoing transformation of the economic system sets the contemporary history of China apart from that of the post-Communist countries in Europe and the former USSR. This contrast partly takes its origins in 1989 and the two major shocks undergone by China?s political system : the one internal (the events during the spring and at Tiananmen), the other external (the end of Communist regimes in central and eastern Europe and a repeat in 1991 with the breakup of the Soviet Union). This critical year, 1989, would lead to a coherent, durable strategy, namely : on the one hand, the consolidation of the monocratic, authoritarianism of the single-party system and, on the other hand, the finalization of the economic transition toward capitalism and the country?s participation in globalization. A new pathway to change was thus opened, one in which the major characteristics of the mixed capitalism of the contemporary Chinese party-state took shape and were consolidated.