Transformational Crises and Adaptive Governability in China:A Critique of the Trapped Transition Thesis

This paper attempts to study, from the perspective of historical comparison, the development of reform in China's political and economic system during the past 30 years and the nature of the governance crisis. Through a comparative analysis, the paper believes that the governance crisis currently facing China is a “transformational crisis”, namely a governance crisis arising from various conflicting interests and the backwardness in governance capability during the economic-social transformational process, similar to the variety of transformational crises that historically beset Western societies. This type of transformational crisis has adversely impacted the state's governing capabilities in multiple ways, thus giving rise to institutional reform. China's 30 years’ reform in the political and economic system has promoted the nation's marketization and democratization processes, which is an inevitable phenomenon of structural transformation under a particular historical context. In reality, marketization and democratization, and economic-social transformation are of reciprocal causation relations. The economic-social transformation will inevitably incur governing crises to varying degrees on the national level, but will also boost the reform and transformation of the state governance system. The reform and transformation in China's state governance system is a progressive and structural adaptation to the economic-social transformation. China has not been trapped in partial reform, nor will it be led into Soviet-type institutional collapse; on the contrary, it is more likely to realize the transformation and development of the state governance system with the progressive model of crisis-reform-adaptation.