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The contemporary problems of democracy in East Asia and its ability to deal with future challenges cannot be understood except in the context of a region whose largest player is a rapidly growing and relatively successful authoritarian regime—China. The field of comparative politics has not developed an adequate conceptual framework for categorizing and understanding different forms of authoritarian government; we need to fill in this gap and develop an understanding of how the specific characteristics of East Asian government arise out of the historically determined development path that the region followed.