A handful of successful Chinese business leaders, known as "red capitalists," took part in the National People's Congress annual meeting in Beijing in March 2003. The fact that they were seated among the 3,000 members of the rubber-stamp parliament says a lot about how far China's communist party has gone to accept capitalists into its tightly controlled organization. At the meeting, some business leaders called upon the state to pass laws protecting the property rights of the Chinese people. Of course, their demands were rejected.

All eyes now look towards China and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for any indications of political reform, now that economic reforms have taken effect. Will the new generations of entrepreneurs, the successful business leaders, and the steady increase in the gross national product one day steer the communist state toward accepting democratic values? Bruce J. Dickson can tell you that not much has changed in terms of democracy in China since the first red capitalists began building the Chinese economy. It was hoped that those red capitalists would be agents of change, that they would bring democracy to the Chinese people while creating a free-market economy, bringing China further success as a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

"For those who are anticipating China's entrepreneurs to become proponents of democratization, especially of liberal democracy as it is understood and practiced in the West, they may be betting on the wrong horse," Dickson writes in this short but extensively documented book.

Many business leaders in China have become members of the communist party. The relationship between the modern entrepreneurs that have brought fortunes to China and the hardcore Communist cadres has not been the best in the world. In 2001, Jiang Zemin stunned his countrymen by announcing that private entrepreneurs would be allowed to join the CCP because they can contribute to developing and modernizing the country. Jiang was strongly opposed by other members of the party who believed that he violated the party's socialist principles and the discipline and criteria for recruiting new members. Dickson explains the evolution of the red capitalists in the past decades and how their presence has affected the decision making process in the Beijing government, which is striving to build the economy while maintaining strict control over society and imposing its ideologies.

In a chapter dealing with the political beliefs and behaviors of the red capitalists, Dickson says the present-day entrepreneurs do not exhibit the basic political activism that would make them agents who would revolutionize the communist system. On the contrary, any political change in China would come from those who hold political power. The CCP has devised a strategy to incorporate private entrepreneurs into the political system and as long as the business side accepts and respects the arrangement, the strategy will work, Dickson says. Some red capitalists have been allowed to run for local government offices, for example in village elections. They have been called to contribute to local development to demonstrate their contributions to society.

Surveys indicate differences between business leaders and government officials. The business side believes it should have a bigger role in fostering political change while the officials want to reserve that role for government leaders. Dickson asks the inevitable question about the future of the CCP in the context of the emergence of red capitalists and economic progress being made in that country. Can the Chinese leadership and the Leninist system survive as they try to adapt to new realities in a free market economy? Dickson says many Leninist parties in Eastern and Central Europe have fallen because they could not adapt to strong demands for political change. Dickson says that ruling Chinese communist leaders have so far escaped that fate. But he adds, "The evolutionary forces now at work are likely to be incompatible with the Leninist political system in China and will serve to undermine the foundations of that system, rather than prop it up."