This timely collection brings together many well-known scholars to systematically explore China's current government and assess that transition toward democracy.

This weakening does not guarantee a successful transition, however, and the contributors show that there are many reasons to be skeptical about the short-term prospects for democracy in China, including historical failures, the underdevelopment of civil society, political apathy, and competing social values. Though China's political culture is essentially neither anti-democratic nor pro-democratic, it must still overcome many obstacles in order to achieve democracy.

Forward Larry Diamond. Introduction Suisheng Zhao. Part : China's Search for Democracy in the Twentieth Century 1. Chinese Democracy: The Lesson of Failure Andrew J. Nathan. 2. A Tragedy of History: China's Search for Democracy in the Twentieth Century Suisheng
Zhao. Part II: Chinese Political Culture and Democracy 3. Confucianism and Western Democracy. 4. Democracy in China Enbao Wang and Regina F. Tutunik. 5. New Moral Foundation of Chinese Democratic Institutional Design Baogang He Part III: Chinese State-Society Relationship and Democracy 6. Conceptual Evolution of Democracy in Intellectual Circles: Rethinking State and Society Yijiang Ding 7. Plural Institutionalism and the Emergence of Intellectual Public Spaces in China: A Case Study of Four Intellectual Groups Edward X. Gu 8. The Limits of the Chinese State: Public Morality and the Xu Honggang Campaign Dawn Einwalter. Part IV: Prospect for Democracy in China at the Dawn of the Twenty First Century 9. The Prospects for Democratization in China: Evidence from the 1995 Beijing Area Study Daniel V. Dowd, Allen Carlson and Mingming Shen. 10. The Political Pragmatism of Chinese University Students: Ten Years After the 1989 Movement Che Po chan. 11. Economic Development and Village Elections in Rural China Tinajian Shi. 12. Chinese Nationalism and Authoritarianism in the 1990's Suisheng Zhao.