State, Society, and Political Change in China and Hungary

The 1989 Tiananmen protest movement in China and the collapse of the Communist regimes in eastern Europe have generated tremendous academic interest in the development of civil society in state socialist systems. The suppression of the protest movement in China has often been attributed to the weakness of civil society, whereas the successful democratic transformation of eastern Europe has been ascribed to its strength.' In itself, however, a focus on civil society can provide only a partial understanding of recent developments in the Communist world. A society-centered approach can not fully explain how a civil society could develop under state socialism in the first place, or why civil society is larger and more effective in some state socialist countries than in others. Answering these critical questions requires that the development of civil society be studied in relation to the institutional framework of the state. The number, capacities, orientations, and demands of the social groups that comprise civil society all develop, to a large extent, through a process of interaction with the structures and activities of the state. The two cases examined here are China and Hungary, two state socialist countries that pioneered economic and political liberalization, Hungary since the early 1960s and China since the late 1970s, but whose reforms have thus far achieved different results. This paper traces the development of a more autonomous society in both countries within the framework of a reforming state socialist regime. It argues that the different political outcomes may be explained by the different patterns of interaction and coalition between state and society in the two countries.