Deepening the State

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 136-154
Author(s):  
Samson Yuen ◽  
Edmund W. Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
State Power ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Multiple State ◽  
United Front ◽  
Governmental Institutions ◽  
Original Event

United front work has long been an important tool through which the Chinese Communist Party exercises political influence in Hong Kong. While existing works have revealed the history, actors, and impact of united front work in this semiautonomous city, few studies have focused on its changing structure and objectives in the post-handover period. Using publicly available reports and an original event dataset, we show that united front work has involved a steady organizational proliferation of social organizations coupled with their increasingly frequent interaction with the mainland authorities and the Hong Kong government. We argue that united front work has become more decentralized and multilayered in its structure and that its objective has been shifting from elite co-optation to proactive countermobilization against pro-democracy threats. Our findings indicate that state power in post-handover Hong Kong does not solely belong to governmental institutions; it is increasingly exercised through an extensive network comprising multiple state and social actors.

High Tide on the High Plateau

2020 ◽  
pp. 121-145
Author(s):  
Benno Weiner
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
High Tide ◽  
Class Analysis ◽  
High Plateau ◽  
United Front ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Sudden Introduction ◽  
The Way

This chapter explores the period from summer 1955 to summer 1956, a year that saw the sudden introduction of class analysis and protocollectivization into Amdo's grasslands. Spurred by the nationwide “High Tide of Socialist Transformation,” which sought to collectivize agriculture at a sudden and startling pace, in fall of 1955, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) organized “intensive investigations” into Amdo's pastoral society, efforts meant to pave the way for the staged introduction of pastoral cooperatives. By early 1956, Qinghai's leadership had made cooperativization (hezuohua) the year's core task in pastoral areas. Under these circumstances, the underpinnings of the United Front came under pressure as socialism itself was declared the means to achieve nationality unity and economic development. With revolutionary impatience threatening to overwhelm United Front pragmatism, the rhetoric used to describe Tibetan elites began to shift as well. Rather than covictims of nationality exploitation, headmen and monastic leaders were increasingly transformed into representatives of the pastoral exploiting class.

Repositioning of Mass Organizations in the United Front

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-292
Author(s):  
Jiao Li ◽  
Muyun Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
National Liberation ◽  
Typical Representative ◽  
United Front

After forming the Anti-Japanese national united front, Chinese Communist Party (ccp) hoped to develop mass organizations in “open,” “democratic” and “mass-oriented” ways. The National Liberation Vanguards of China (nlvc) was a typical representative of left-wing mass organizations in kmt-controlled areas. During 1936-1939, nlvc’s life course was a microcosm of ccp’s adjustment in mass work. nlvc faced ordeals between inclusiveness and insistence, testing whether ccp could stick to principles in mass work. This paper conducts a case study centered on the nlvc, to analyze how ccp repositioned mass organizations during the Anti-Japanese War and explore how mass organizations affected the Party’s vitality.

Textual Anxiety: Reading (and Misreading) the Draft Constitution in China, 1954

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 153-179
Author(s):  
Neil J. Diamant ◽  
Feng Xiaocai
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
State Legitimacy ◽  
Conventional View ◽  
Political Terror ◽  
Ordinary Citizens ◽  
Draft Constitution

This article uses comments, questions, and conversations about the PRC's draft constitution of 1954 to assess state legitimacy and how people felt more generally about the Communist regime. Taking advantage of untapped archival sources in Hong Kong and the mainland—including classified intraparty reports and transcripts from meetings in factories, police stations, universities, and villages—this article challenges the conventional view that the constitution bolstered support for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Instead, the document generated a great deal of anxiety among ordinary citizens, as well as among CCP officials and the regime's favored classes. This “text-based” cause of emotional turmoil was a supplement to the classic forms of political terror that dominate the literature on Communist dictatorships. Despite widespread confusion, people's identification of problematic sections of the constitution turned out to be remarkably prescient in light of political disasters in the 1950s and 1960s and ongoing constitutional controversies in the era after Mao Zedong.

scholarly journals British Views of the Legacy of the Colonial Administration of Hong Kong: A Preliminary Assessment

1997 ◽  
Vol 151 ◽  
pp. 553-566
Author(s):  
Brian Hook
Keyword(s):  
International Trade ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Colonial Administration ◽  
Preliminary Assessment ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Historical Significance

The legacy of the colonial administration of Hong Kong, viewed from the majority of constituencies in Britain, is chiefly formed from the characteristics of the territory on the eve of retrocession. This, it will be noted, is in sharp contrast to the views formed by both the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and many Chinese observers. The British prefer to emphasize personal freedoms, the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary, the efficiency of government, the competitiveness of business, the preeminent status in international trade, the suppression of corruption, the quality of the engineering infrastructure, and the improving health and welfare provisions as essential characteristics of their legacy.Their Chinese counterparts are much more likely to hark back to the bad old days of national humiliation and imperialist exploitation, seeking to draw the attention of all compatriots to the historical significance of reunification.

Religion as Culture

2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 476-494 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Marshall
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Ethical Dilemma ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Religious Identities ◽  
Historical Approach ◽  
State Governance ◽  
Cultural Sphere

Today’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which came to power in 1949, continues to recognize religion and Christianity as part of the dominant Western culture, and as the means to establish relationships and promote religion and culture. When faced with a moral or ethical dilemma the CCP looks to a Confucian past for traditions just as the Canadian state draws on the Protestant and Catholic cultures of its so-called founding peoples. The Chinese state has additionally attempted to manage religious engagement by propping up select Buddhist temples and working through grassroots personal webs of connection to household religious altars, enshrined deities, and communal practices. In China and in Canada, states claim neutrality but in both cases and for different reasons religion is treated as culture. The paper’s ethno-historical approach draws on over 15 years of fieldwork and historical research throughout the Chinese cultural sphere (China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, and Canada). Looking across histories and nations it traces state governance in China and Canada, webs of connections, and personal interactions that have shaped religious identities and the resurgence of Chinese temple life and select religious cults.

Mao, Stalin, and the Formation of the Anti-Japanese United Front: 1935–37

1992 ◽  
Vol 129 ◽  
pp. 149-170
Author(s):  
Michael M. Sheng
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Historical Inquiry ◽  
United Front ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party

The formation of the anti-Japanese national united front between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Guomindang (GMD), and Moscow's role in it, has attracted much historical inquiry. Our knowledge about it is enriched with the appearance of John Garver's and Kui-Kuong Shum's recent works. However, there are some important issues raised by them worth further discussion, and some factual evidence which needs more study.

Digitally Dismantling Asian Authoritarianism

Contention ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Adam K. Dedman ◽  
Autumn Lai
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Public Figures ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party

In April 2020, a Twitter war erupted under the hashtag #MilkTeaAlliance. It united users from Thailand, Taiwan, and Hong Kong in a fight against Chinese techno-nationalists’ attempts to shame public figures into supporting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s framing of geopolitics. In the months that followed, Thai, Taiwanese, and Hong Kong activists continued to lend support to each other through their use of this and other hashtags. Why does the #MilkTeaAlliance hashtag resonate with so many? What political contexts preceded the consolidation of the #MilkTeaAlliance, and how may this alliance reshape geopolitical landscapes off-line? We approach these questions from our perspective as activists embedded in these movements. We argue that the formation of the #MilkTeaAlliance unites voices that are marginalized diplomatically, discursively, and affectively by the CCP, and—more crucially—generates valuable affective and physical forms of intra-Asian solidarity against authoritarianism in the region.

Tibetans do the Housework, but Han are the Masters

2020 ◽  
pp. 146-160
Author(s):  
Benno Weiner
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
High Tide ◽  
Great Leap ◽  
Great Leap Forward ◽  
United Front ◽  
The One ◽  
The Great Leap Forward ◽  
Minority Nationality ◽  
Party Congress

This chapter looks at the events in Zeku County and beyond from the end of the High Tide in summer of 1956 through the eve of the Great Leap Forward in late 1957. This period, referred to as an “un-Maoist interlude,” was marked by a retreat from plans for rapid collectivization and even saw a push during the One Hundred Flowers campaign to encourage open criticism of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) so that its mistakes could be rectified. A centerpiece was soliciting critiques from United Front figures, particularly Han intellectuals but also leading minority nationality figures. Among the latter, many complained that the autonomy the CCP promised non-Han communities at the time of “Liberation” had proved more mirage than fact. Far from a reactionary stance, in the months following the Eighth Party Congress, this critique was widely promoted in Party and government circles.

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