The Party Is Far from Over

2007 ◽  
Vol 106 (701) ◽  
pp. 243-251
Author(s):  
Bruce J. Dickson

Does the Chinese Communist Party derive enough legitimacy from economic growth? Can a party-state survive by co-opting some potential challengers while repressing others? So far, the CCP has answered these questions in the affirmative. Yet the debate goes on. This year, as the party's Seventeenth Congress prepares to unveil a new Politburo (same as the old Politburo?), we asked four scholars to offer their latest thinking on the subject.

Modern China ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 322-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ding Xiaodong

This article argues that the Chinese Communist Party has adopted a unique understanding of law. Unlike the liberal view and the unwritten constitution view, which generally consider law as positive norms that exist independently of politics, the party understands law as a reflection of the party’s and the people’s will and a form of the party’s and the people’s self-discipline. In the party’s view, liberal rule of law theories are self-contradictory, illusive, and meaningless. This article argues that the party views the people as a political concept and itself as a political leading party, marking a fundamental difference from a competitive party in a parliamentary system. The legitimacy of the party’s dominant role and the party-state regime, therefore, depends on whether the party can continue to provide political momentum to lead the people and represent them in the future.


Author(s):  
Christian P. Sorace

This chapter examines how the Chinese Communist Party engineered “glory” in the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake by mobilizing the discourse of “Party spirit” (dangxing). In addition to being responsible for state administration and economic growth, the cadre is also an embodiment and conduit of Party legitimacy. Antithetical to Max Weber's definition of institutions as that which remove embodiment from governance, in China, cadres are Party legitimacy made flesh. As flesh, they must be prepared to suffer. This chapter argues that the Party revitalizes its legitimacy by showing benevolence and glory, which depend on the willingness of cadres to suffer and sacrifice themselves on behalf of the people. In the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake, these norms and expectations were implemented in concrete policy directives and work pressures.


Author(s):  
David SG Goodman

The decision by the Chinese Communist Party in 2012 to move to open direct national elections was taken in order to ensure political stability and continued economic growth, and to enhance its position of leadership. The first national general election in 2015 followed in the wake of the landmark Constituent Assembly. Victory in 2015 by the Chinese Communist Party has been accompanied by political stability and sustained economic growth. Though there is likely to be greater competition in the General Election of 2020 the principle change in politics has been the emergence of significant public policy debate. Issues of corruption, housing, and regional development are likely to be major considerations during the election, alongside debate on the simultaneous referenda that have been called on Tibet and federalism.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Huwy-Min Lucia Liu

This article discusses how the Chinese Communist Party governed death in Shanghai during the first half of the People's Republic of China. It examines how officials nationalized funeral institutions, promoted cremation, and transformed what they believed to be the unproductivity of the funeral industry into productivity (by raising pigs in cemeteries, for instance). I show how each of these policies eliminated possible sources of identity that were prevalent in conceptualizing who the dead were and what their relationships with the living could be. Specifically, in addition to the construction of socialist workers, the state worked to remove cosmopolitan, associational, religious, and relational ideas of self. By modifying funerary rituals and ways of interment, the Chinese state aimed to produce individualized and undifferentiated political subjects directly tied to the party-state. The civil governance of death aimed to produce citizen-subjects at the end of life.


1975 ◽  
Vol 61 ◽  
pp. 61-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregor Benton

The subject of this article is the development of the second united front in China between 1935 and 1938, and in particular the difference between the Comintern and the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on this question. In the first part of the period these differences revealed themselves in the Comintern's criticisms of the CCP's slow rate of progress towards rapprochement with the Kuomintang (KMT). As progress towards the united front gathered speed, they more and more came to centre on how far the alliance should go and the status of the communist areas and armies in relation to the central power of the KMT. Eventually the Maoist interpretation emerged successful from this contest between the two centres, and Wang Ming, chief Chinese spokesman for the Comintern, was elbowed away from the levers of power in the Party.


1993 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 315-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jieli Li

Geopolitical theory is employed to address the question of why the Chinese Communist Party-state persists, despite Western pressures stemming from the suppression of student demonstrators in “Tienanmen Square” in 1989. As the theory postulates, macro dynamic forces revolving around the geopolitical processes are crucial to the resource mobilization and legitimacy of the state. The entire history of the Chinese Communist Party is reviewed in order to document the conclusion that changes in the geopolitical position of the Party are associated with periods of internal strength and weakness. Since 1979, the Chinese Communist Party-state has been increasingly favored by geopolitical circumstances, thereby facilitating its internal strength even in the face of Western pressures, potential for internal dissent, and collapse of the Soviet empire. As long as this favorable geopolitical trend continues, the Chinese Communist Party will likely exist as a ruling political force in China.


Asian Survey ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 59 (5) ◽  
pp. 870-888
Author(s):  
Wen-Hsuan Tsai ◽  
Zheng-Wei Lin

Rumors are a set of collective discussions used by cadres or the masses to attain specific goals. Both political elites and the general public reveal their dissatisfaction or concern with the Chinese Communist Party regime through the dissemination of politically charged rumors, fueled by the party-state system’s habit of withholding information and amplified by traditional Chinese superstition.


Asian Survey ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 484-503 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wen-Hsuan Tsai ◽  
Peng-Hsiang Kao

Abstract This research takes the case of Public Nomination and Direct Election, currently being rolled out in the People's Republic of China, to explain the function of elections in China. We believe that the goal of implementing this election system is to increase the governing ability of the Chinese Communist Party, thus sustaining the survival of the party-state system.


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