Filtered water coolers

Bourgeois liberalism () was a term of disparagement used by People’s Republic of China rulers of the late 1980s and early 1990s to refer to a perceived political and cultural threat—in political terms as parliamentary democracy and in cultural terms as Western popular culture. A number of campaigns were launched against bourgeois liberalism around the time of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and immediately afterwards.

The term largely disappeared by the mid-1990s particularly after Deng Xiaoping’s trip to the south. Much of the reason for the disappearance was that by the mid-1990s the Communist Party of China leadership believed that by attempting to provide Chinese with increased wealth and a standard of living which existed in the West, that it would be able to co-opt the support of the rich and middle classes and hold on to political power.

See also

• Bourgeoisie
• Liberalism