Chinese politics and comparative authoritarianism: institutionalization and adaptation for regime resilience

China's authoritarian regime under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) remains resilient and responsive to domestic and international threats to its survival, especially considering the inherent instability of other authoritarian regimes. What strategies allow the CCP to stay in power? How do institutions help the CCP to sustain one-party rule, if at all? How does the regime maintain centralized rule over its vast population and territory? Finally, how does the regime respond to the people's demands and dissatisfactions? This review essay discusses how the growing literature of comparative authoritarianism helps (or does not help) us to answer these questions. It discusses three books – one on comparative authoritarianism and two on Chinese politics. In How Dictatorships Work: Power, Personalization, and Collapse, the authors (i.e., Barbara Geddes, Joseph Wright, and Erica Frantz) test various hypotheses exploring the issues regarding the central political processes that shape the policy choices of authoritarian regimes, such as seizing power, consolidation of elites, information gathering, and how dictatorships break down. Are their findings consistent or contradictory with observation of Chinese authoritarian politics? To answer this question, we draw empirical evidence from Bruce Dickson's The Dictator's Dilemma: The Chinese Communist Party's Strategy for Survival and Min Ye's The Belt Road and Beyond: State Mobilized Globalization in China, 1998–2018. These books suggest why China's authoritarian regime remains resilient.

The Political Development of Contemporary China from the Perspective of Historical Political Science

The political development of contemporary China defies existing political theories. The framework of “political science” based on the ‘rational man hypothesis’ has proven to be fallible in terms of correctly envisioning China’s future. Appertaining to the Chinese political history, historical political science offers not only epistemology and methodology of the subject, but also an ontological element, for observation. With respect to historical political science, contemporary Chinese politics is considered to be the natural genetic extension of the Chinese civilization as well as a continuous and unified development process spanning over a period of 70 years ever since the People’s Republic of China was founded. Historical political science, deemed to be a tailored research approach for the development of contemporary Chinese politics, essentially adds further value and significance to this discipline.

Between Truth and Lies

By the late 1950s, signs of strain in Chinese diplomacy were evident as Mao Zedong pushed the further radicalization of Chinese politics and society, culminating in the devastating famine during the Great Leap Forward. During the Great Leap Forward, China’s envoys undercut their country’s credibility with allies and foes alike by insisting that the tragedy was the result of ‘natural disasters,’ even as diplomats themselves went hungry and their loved ones starved. China’s relationship with the Soviet Union also deteriorated rapidly, resulting in the Sino-Soviet split and a decades-long polemical war between the two powers which set the stage for eventual Sino-American rapprochement.

The Construction and Promotion of the Theoretical System of Marxist Politics — Summary of Wang Huiyan's Political Thoughts

Mr. Wang Huiyan is the leader of contemporary Chinese Marxist politics, and has made outstanding contributions to the Chinese characteristics, Chinese style and Chinese style formed by Chinese politics. Mr. Wang’s political thoughts have always been guided by Marxism, and China’s national conditions have always been the starting point for political studies. He creatively proposed the Marxist political theory system and principle curriculum system with state power as the core, and developed It has established important theories such as the construction of socialist democracy and legal system with Chinese characteristics. Mr. Wang's theoretical system of Marxist politics has been vigorously promoted by the academic circles and has made outstanding contributions to the construction of socialism with Chinese characteristics.