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The assessment neatly fits the China of the past decade. Since the much harsher repression of the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976 and since Deng began his program of economic reform in 1979, the country has become for many of its inhabitants a more hospitable and prosperous place. Possibly the most remarkable indicator of this is the 132.8% rise in per capita income between 1978 and 1987. Meanwhile the economy boomed at an average annual rate of almost 10%.
Much of the trauma comes from the fact that the benefits are rarely spread equitably. "There's a widespread feeling that Chinese society has become unjust," says Stanley Rosen, professor of sociology at the University of Southern California. "The decisions as to who will do well seem arbitrary results of government policy." Entrepreneurs and party officials profit from the economic reforms, but office workers and intellectuals do not. So while an individual's expectations are conditioned by the prosperity he sees around him, that newfound affluence is cruelly out of reach for many. TV, with its ubiquitous images of the wealth that many enjoy beyond China's borders, has deepened the dissatisfaction. The contrast is all the more painful because, amid it all, corruption flourishes. Says Rosen: "There's an ideological confusion. People feel leaders don't know how to solve problems."
What most hurts the average Chinese is an inflation rate of around 30%. Expectations developed over years of growing personal income have suddenly been sharply set back. Prosperity, instead of being around the corner, looks out of reach. Such economic dips happen frequently in history and rarely cause revolutions. But almost all revolutions follow economic downturns. France in 1778 entered a lengthy depression; the tremendous damage done to the Russian economy by World War I helped precipitate that country's revolution.
Thus China's turmoil is not surprising in light of its inhabitants' mounting frustrations. Nonetheless, true revolutions, as opposed to coups or intermittent mass protests, are extremely rare and all but unheard of in situations in which the state wields so much force. Without a core of . ideologically inspired revolutionaries, without its own Jacobins, Bolsheviks or even latter-day Long Marchers, China is unlikely to have a full-scale revolution.
Much, however, depends on the Beijing regime. Revolutions are usually triggered by the intractability and violence of governments, and the declaration of martial law showed that Deng Xiaoping and Li Peng were prepared to crush the protests with military force. Violence can, and often does, achieve its aim of suppression. It can also galvanize an opposition and make compromise unthinkable.
Power, Mao Zedong famously sneered, grows out of the barrel of a gun. But the preacher of Chinese Communism neglected to add that the will to fire is a prerequisite when the target is not intimidated by threats and when a society is prepared to resist those with the guns by peaceful means. A week ago, certainly two, the protests might have been extinguished with the number of casualties usual for large demonstrations -- 20, 50, perhaps several hundred deaths. Now, the government might have to kill thousands before the protests would cease.