The totalitarian model revisited: An assessment of the post-Mao regime change

Two decades of Chinese reforms have brought about a considerable change in many aspects of post-Mao China. While many have begun to talk with great relish about the changes and even rejoice in celebrating some “fundamental” changes in China, those critical or fundamental aspects of the Chinese communist system and central realities of China tend to be pushed aside, neglected, and very rarely mentioned. The actual picture of the empirical world is one with two sides. A comprehensive and all-sided assessment of the twenty-year change will counterbalance the one-sided view and make an important theoretical contribution to the study of regime change in post-Mao China. The assessment requires a coherent and effective macro-model or conceptual framework for defining the political regime, examining what has been changed and what has not, and assessing the nature of change in the post-Mao regime and its significance in the future of China's political development.; This dissertation challenges the predominant view that post-Mao China has moved away from communist totalitarianism and the totalitarian model is no longer useful in the Chinese studies. This dissertation attempts to construct a plausible macro-model for defining “regime identity” and applies the refined model to the study of regime change in post-Mao China to test if this model can serve as conceptual reference points for observing, explaining, and evaluating the regime change in post-Mao China. On the other hand, the case study itself provides confirming evidence for the utility of the refined totalitarian model in defining “regime identity” of a political regime and assessing the nature of change in the political regime.; The findings of this study demonstrates that, in spite of incoherence among the components of the regime or inconsistency between the regime and related behavior, the practice of post-Mao reform remains not only rooted in but also committed to the “hard core” of political, ideological, legal, social and economic systems of Chinese communist totalitarianism, and many typical totalitarian practices, which do not contradict the regime's commitment to the intermediate goal of economic modernization, but make only adjustments to the action means of achieving them.