The Revival of China’s Entrepreneurial Class in Historical-Comparative Perspective: Prospects for a New Chinese Liberalism

This book examines the evolution of China’s entrepreneurial class and prospects for entrepreneurial-driven political institutional change. The author argues that decades of economic reforms and social transformation have illuminated a fundamental contradiction in contemporary China-a rule by law closed political system governing over an emergent entrepreneurial class requiring property protection-that requires resolution. The author argues that the Chinese Communist Party has one of two choices: crush the entrepreneurial class, and with it, economic growth and the party’s legitimacy, or cede to the entrepreneurs’ demands for the rule of law and political representation. The author’s interviews with Chinese entrepreneurs show the rise of liberal qualities-rationality, autonomy, property-law interests, political awareness and political agency-among China’s new entrepreneurial class. As such, the author believes that this liberal trajectory among China’s entrepreneurs, in conjunction with a lack of viable alternatives for the party, will translate into a new Chinese liberalism and ultimately political change.