destruction is not a necessity. Chinese economic institutions are certainly more inclusive than those in the Soviet Union, but China’ s political institutions are still extractive. The Communist Party is all-powerful in China and controls the entire state bureaucracy, the armed forces, the media, and large parts of the economy. Chinese people have few political freedoms and very little participation in the political process. Many have long believed that growth in China would bring democracy and greater pluralism. There was a real sense in 1989 that the Tiananmen Square demonstrations would lead to greater opening and perhaps even the collapse of the communist regime. But tanks were unleashed on the demonstrators, and instead of a peaceful revolution, history books now call it the Tiananmen Square Massacre. In many ways, Chinese political institutions became more extractive in the aftermath of Tiananmen; reformers such as Zhao Ziyang, who as general secretary of the Communist Party lent his support to the students in Tiananmen Square, were purged, and the party clamped down on civil liberties and press freedom with greater zeal. Zhao Ziyang was put under house arrest for more than fifteen years, and his public record was gradually erased, so that he would not be even a symbol for those who supported political change.
Today the party’ s control over the media, including the Internet, is unprecedented. Much of this is achieved through self-censorship: media outlets know that they should not mention Zhao Ziyang or Liu Xiaobo, the government critic demanding greater democratization, who is still languishing in prison even after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Self-censorship is supported by an Orwellian apparatus that can monitor conversations and communications, close Web sites and newspapers, and even selectively block access to individual news stories on the Internet. All of this was on display when news about corruption charges against the son of the general secretary of the party since 2002, Hu Jintao, broke out in 2009. The party’ s apparatus immediately sprang into action and was not only able to prevent Chinese media from covering the case but also managed to selectively block stories about the case on the New York Times and Financial Times