China is sleep-walking towards becoming a market democracy. The argument here is that the CCP is in metamorphosis, verbally committed to continuity, but in effect committing slow political suicide by changing its inner nature while discarding its outer skin. Membership in 2002 of the WTO in effect places Western norms at the heart of China's business system, while we may expect the introduction of discrete changes in political norms of the CCP in the run up to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

Jonathan Story is a Shell Fellow in Economic Transformation and a Professor of International Political Economy (INSEAD). This article is based on the author's book: China: The Race to Market (Pearson's, April 2003).