The Chicoms on the World State

A review of "Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World," Clive Hamilton, Mareike Ohlberg, One World Publications, 2020, pp. 418, $17.41 hardbound.

100 Years of the CCP – The “long road” and the triumphant advance of the People’s Republic and its party

This year not only celebrates the founding of the Chinese Communist Party 100 years ago, but it is also the 110th anniversary of the 1911 revolution, which in addition to many developments in this specific phase played a role – such as the May 4th Movement. Another starting point for the development of the CCP were the communist and socialist positions of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels – the two ultimately formulated the idea – as well as Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and later Josef Stalin, the leaders of the first socialist state. From these approaches, Mao Zedong developed an independent strategy adapted to the Chinese situation. This so-called Maoism spread in particular through the so-called “Red Book”. After the successful revolution that led to the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party under Mao pursued its own communist path from 1956. In 1960, China and the Soviet Union broke completely because of Khrushchev's policy of de-Stalinization. This development culminated in the Chinese Cultural Revolution initiated by Mao from 1966 onwards. It was based on the theory of a permanent revolutionary transformation of society; the communist ideals should be anchored throughout the Chinese people. From 1979, under Deng Xiaoping, an economic change of course took shape (keyword special economic zones), which led to the opening to capitalist economic forms without having to abandon the CCP's claim to leadership at the political level, but enabled rapid economic, technological and scientific advances that up to stop today. At the same time, the CCP is endeavoring to alleviate the poverty of migrant workers in the coming periods, to solve the ecological challenges in the course of economic growth and at the same time to close the world with the aid of the Silk Road, which once connected continents – now under the title "One Road, One Belt". This global cooperation now seems all the more necessary as in times of the COVID-19 pandemic, the party successfully shows and should prove how this crisis can be contained – for the benefit of the economy, society and health.

Book review: Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg, Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World

Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg, Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World (Hardie Grant Books, 2020), pp. xiii+418, $22.26. ISBN 9780861540167.

On the Informal Rules of the Chinese Communist Party

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is a closely constituted party. Recent studies of the CCP describe and evaluate its formal rules, but to understand the Party as an institution we also need to understand its informal rules. The literature on “party norms”, “institutionalization” and the “unwritten constitution” often fails to distinguish rules from other political phenomena. It confuses informal rules with political practices, constitutional conventions, behavioural equilibria and doctrinal discourse. It is prone to overlook important rules, and to see rules where there are none. Hence, it potentially overstates how institutionalized the CCP is, and therefore how resilient it is. The article provides a clearer account of informal rules and suggests a different explanation for the resilience of the CCP.

In the Realm of Comrades? Scattered Thoughts Occasioned by the Centenary of the Founding of the Chinese Communist Party, 1921–2021

This brief essay meditates on the advent of the ideal of horizontal social relations, exemplified in the early CCP years in the political term, “comrade” (tongzhi). It takes up Qu Qiubai as exemplary of a Marxist political thinker whose commitments to horizontality/comrade relations can be illustrated through his theories of literature, translation and language. It proposes that despite Xi Jinping's recent rhetorical admonishments to re-activate “comrade” as a political term, it is the LGBTQ community's appropriation of “comrade” in contemporary China that actually holds the potential for a substantive reanimation of the utopian ideals begun a century ago.

The Chinese Diplomacy and the Battle for Truth During the COVID-19 Pandemic

This article analyzes Chinese diplomacy during the Covid-19 crisis and the struggle for control of narratives aimed at constructing an image of a responsible nation. In this paper I assume that the emergence of COVID-19 represented a critical problem for the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party, forcing the authorities to fight not only to contain the spread of the virus but also to create and maintain a favorable public opinion regarding management of the crisis both nationally and internationally. It is in this context that the Chinese government launched an active diplomacy offensive, presenting itself as a responsible state through both “Wolf Warrior Diplomacy” and “Mask Diplomacy”. Based on Foucault´s approach to the Regime of Truth, I analyze the narratives and activities of the Chinese government and how diplomacy was employed in order to create a truth about the coronavirus outbreak. In addition, I review how social mechanisms and conventions were utilized to emphasize and validate knowledge linked to power systems. I conclude that if the Chinese government has the “truth” as a part of a regime, it both enhances the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party and increases its power. At the same time a strong Chinese government is able to devote significant resources to spreading a discourse both nationally and internationally which is purportedly true. The point of the discourse however is to further strengthen the power of the CCP, rather than to achieve global hegemony.