Red Capitalists in China: the Party, Private Entrepreneurs, and Prospects for Political Change.

• Author: Dorn, James A.
• Position: Book Review

Red Capitalists in China: The Party, Private Entrepreneurs, and Prospects for Political Change By Bruce J. Dickson Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. x, 187. $65.00 cloth, $23.00 paperback.

Since 1978, China has become one of the world's largest trading nations, attracted billions of dollars of foreign direct investment, liberalized its economy, and quadrupled its real income per capita. Yet little progress has been made in changing the political regime: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to have a firm grasp on power.

Without doubt, economic liberalization has given people more personal freedom than they had under Mao Ze-dong's centrally controlled economy. Today people can own their own homes, travel, work in the nonstate sector, buy automobiles, invest, and aspire to higher standards of living without being controlled by the CCP. In this sense, the party has lost some of its power over the lives of ordinary citizens. Yet its political power remains largely intact.

In Red Capitalists in China, Bruce Dickson, an associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, provides a detailed analysis of how the CCP has adapted to the growing nonstate sector and how private entrepreneurs have avoided politically sensitive issues in order to achieve success. He focuses on entrepreneurs who have been co-opted into the party and those who were already party members when they entered the private sector. Using survey data, Dickson finds that these "red capitalists" have continued to support the status quo and have not been the "agents of change" that many thought they would be.

Red Capitalists is a well-written and important book with an abundance of data bearing on the relation between economic liberalization and political reform, especially the interaction between the private sector and the state. Dickson's survey data indicate a close link between local government officials and the private sector, which should not be surprising in China's "market socialist" system. Political connections allow greater access to markets, and because of arbitrary taxes and regulations, private entrepreneurs must keep a close watch on the government and the party. Moreover, without a rule of law and effective protection of basic rights, neither officials nor entrepreneurs dare to voice their opposition to the existing regime and actively call for Western-style democracy.

In surveying 524 private entrepreneurs and 230 local party and government officials, Dickson found that "China's entrepreneurs are not yet seeking an autonomous status with which they can challenge the state." Rather, "they seek to be embedded in...