of china is $8.7 billion dollars, however the expenditures have been estimated at ten times that amount at $87 billion dollars. That is still less than a third of what the U.S. defense budget is at $265. $87 billion 1/3 of Americas defense budget is not a lot of money considering the fact that there population is almost three times the size the U.S. has. The political fallout from the Tiananmen crisis shaped much of Chinas political landscape after 1989. Extensive organizational measures were adopted to squelch political conflicts within the Chinese Communist Party and the Peoples Liberation Army, and to tighten control over colleges, factories, and villages. The lessons of the 1989 pro-democracy movement was that a ruling Communist party could not tolerate liberalization (4,pgs. 1-3)The serious hard-line communist resisted any, and all of the propositions that would involve any political change that might threaten the one-party dictatorship, thus condemning Western Cultural and political influence in China. Moderate components in the party, forced on the defensive by the 1989 crackdown, appealed for incremental (4=Sullivan, Lawrence R., China Since Tiananmen copyright 1994, pgs. 1-2) institutional alterations and advocated even bigger openness to the West. The pair agreed that unless high-level corruption was stopped, the country faced dissolved political instability. Some among the leadership even feared a similar breakup to that of Yugoslavia (4, pg. 2).Despite outward appearances of strength, the Chinese leadership has been revealed as weak, divided internally, and unable to keep up with the forces of change that has been sweeping much of the Communist world. While the leaders maintain short-term power, they cannot maintain without upkeep of the key sectors of their urban society. The present policy prescriptions can be summarized as back to the future. The old politicians who dominate Chinas politics dream of a bygone...
