Comparing Democratization of Former Soviet Union (Russia) and China.

The collapse of the Soviet experiment and the country that embodied it, as well as the great success of Chinese economic reform and its short-lived democratic movement in the summer of 1989, have attracted much attention from lots of political scientists. The great changes were regarded as two different ways of democratization. However, 15 years later, things didn't turn out to be what the political scientists expected. Russia's backlash to a non-democracy and China's successful economic development without any solid political reform seriously question the conclusion. This paper compares the political and economic changes in the former Soviet Union (Russia) and China from a new perspective based on the additional information in the 15 years after the great events and tries to predict better the democratic future of these two big developing countries. The paper will proceed in three parts. First, I will compare the political and economic reforms of the former Soviet Union and China in the 1980's and the beginning of 1990's. I will explain why the reforms ended up differently in these communist countries. Next, I will review the literature and theories about the democracy, capitalism, and market economy from the perspectives of Western political scientists and Marxists. The interesting finding is that although different ideologies, both schools emphasize the significance of development of capitalist economy. Finally, I will demonstrate the importance of economic precondition of democracy and discuss the democratic prospect of Russia and China based on their economic development and social structure. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]