"There is a final irony that has been implied, but not stated, in the way in which this chapter has portrayed politics portrayed Chinese politics since the establishment of Chiang’s Nationalist government in 1928, through the victory of the Communist Party in 1949 to the present era, as a passing on of the baton in a wider, consistent, politics of modernity. For the political form of China today—a one-party state that does still allow a significant amount of individual autonomy, a powerful state with a role in the international order which is partly cooperative and partly confrontational, and a highly successful semi-capitalist economy in which the state and party still play a significant, embedded role—means that the Communist Party of today has essentially created the state sought by the progressive wing of the Nationalists in the 1930s rather than the dominant, radical Communists of the 1960s. One can imagine Chiang Kaishek’s ghost wandering round China today nodding in approval, while Mao’s ghost follows behind him, moaning at the destruction of his vision. The intellectual assumptions behind both the Nationalists and the Communists in the last century were similar in many important ways, making this seeming paradox perfectly comprehensible if examined in a somewhat longue durée that extends back before 1978 or 1949."