Given the mixed signals and trends in China, it may be premature to identify a specific timeframe within which China will become Free or even Partly Free on the Freedom House scale. A more fruitful intellectual exercise might be to ask not when but how the Middle Kingdom could become Free. No one should underrate the will and skill that the ruling Chinese Communist Party will put into keeping its grip on power.
About the Author
Minxin Pei is Tom and Margot Pritzker ’72 Professor of Government and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College. In January 2021, he joined the Board of Directors of the National Endowment for Democracy.
It was the impact of Tiananmen that made the democracy movement in Hong Kong a mass phenomenon. Today, the democratic cause in Hong Kong remains linked to the democratic cause…
Read the full essay here. The twenty years since 1989 have brought two major developments in worker activism. First, whereas workers were part of the mass uprising in the Tiananmen…
Beijing is bent on deploying mass surveillance to eliminate threats to its rule. It is terrifying—and the latest example of its determination to remold society.
