The End of Communism in 1989 in the Eyes of Chinese Specialists

This paper examines how a group of specialists in China perceived the end of Communism in Europe. A series of essays published in 1990 “for internal reference only” showed how China struggled to make sense of the collapse of the communist regimes and, more importantly, who to blame for the crisis and what communists should have done to avert their demise. It is shown that the Chinese perspective on Europe 1989 has contributed to not only an ingrained hostility towards civil society, dissidents, liberal democracies and western values, but also a sharp learning curve as to how to prevent the country from following the footsteps of its European counterparts.