How did increased economic freedom in China lead to a demand for increasing political freedom and political reform?
In the last two decades, Chinese communist regime has been able to maintain economic performance as a basis for legitimacy and has been quite successful at that. There was a time in the late eighties, as you know, 1989, student movements and so on. At that time, there was a time when this legitimacy was shaken and partly its because of the high inflation. There was a period of time in the late-80s, 86 to 87, 88 especially when inflation was very bad and people began to doubt whether the regime could do a good job in terms of economic development and economic growth. And also corruption was very bad too. So combined with high inflation, with the corruption, people obviously challenged, became very frustrated with the regime. Now after 1989, the reform did not stop. Interestingly Deng, again Deng Xiaoping came out in 1991 to restart the reform process and since then, actually, I think the reform actually progressed quite rapidly. By now, year 2003, I think the Chinese economy has grown v
