Chinese Politics and Society

An Introduction

Flemming Christiansen, Shirin M. Rai

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317903765
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

An introduction to Chinese Politics which provides an accessible overview of the structures and dynamics of Chinese politics today. Concentrating on the era since 1949, the text takes a look at politics in the widest sense, analysing political institutions within the crucial broader context of Chinese history and the pressures of social, economic and cultural changes.

1 Introduction: Approaches to the study of Chinese politics

Where do we get our ideas and perceptions of Chinese politics from? This chapter aims to give a four d'horizon of the commonest views of Chinese politics as they have appeared in the scholarly literature. We neither attempt to be exhaustive nor selectively prescriptive in our discussion.

THEORIES AND CONCEPTS: SHIFTING VIEWS OF CHINA

It is the conviction of the authors of this book that critical understanding can only be achieved when we know our tools, the analytical concepts we employ when we seek to comprehend the reality of Chinese politics. To achieve this, we will in the following sections of this chapter introduce some of the most important concepts, models and theories that have been used to explain Chinese political reality.

Our ‘Chinese’ problem in the West is that China in the minds of people, strongly supported by philosophers, writers and political propagandists (from the Jesuits and Leibnitz to Jean-Paul Sartre), has oscillated between Utopia and the dungeons of hell, and between being a great civilization or a socialist alternative that works and being ‘the sick man of Asia’ or a repressive communist regime. The deficiencies of Europe could easily be contrasted with the civilized order of the Chinese empire, supported by tall stories and travellers' tales. The deplorable situation in the Soviet Union, in most Third World countries and even in Europe could be juxtaposed with the Chinese miracle, a socially just paradise freed of all exploitation and corruption, supported by visitors' accounts of the people's communes. The racially ‘superior’ Christian Westerner was, in the nineteenth century and far into the twentieth century, reassured by the fact that he was not one of those suffering, heathen ‘Chinamen’, and in current times Western democracy claimed a similar moral edge above the Chinese political system. We must push these stereotypes aside in order to understand China.

The images of China depicted above do not reflect the general standard of Western research on Chinese politics. On the contrary, most studies of Chinese politics are cautious, well researched, and normally based on profound knowledge of the country and its main language. However, when we — as non-Chinese — study Chinese politics, we are discussing a political culture with an historical and cultural background different from our own. Our intellectual and political categories, our historical and cultural foundations, and our definitions of ourselves and our environment are those of foreign countries sharing a common cultural background different from that existing in China. Our ‘discovering’ of China is influenced by all these factors. The expectations and value patterns underlying most political science approaches may prove to be very limited when we attempt to understand countries like China, with which these expectations and values are not shared. This dilemma is fundamental. On the one hand, we need a functional and understandable frame of reference when we examine China; on the other hand, our understanding will be unsatisfactory if we impose our cultural prejudices on China. We cannot hope to solve the dilemma, but we can try to keep it in mind. At a more practical level, the literature and the selection of material with which we are presented as students of Chinese politics invariably pledges itself to different approaches and conceptualizations which shift over time. The understanding of China in Western literature, therefore, is an important interface for our own understanding of China. It is important that we distinguish between different concepts and approaches, that we let them come out into the open, and that we weigh them against each other.

TOTALITARIANISM

Doak A. Barnett was one of the most influential observers of Chinese politics (Barnett, 1964). His view of China was based on the totalitarian model. Barnett's main effort was to analyze how the centralized power of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was exercised, how a small handful of leaders were able to maintain control of this vast country. His analysis had as its fundamental hypothesis that China was totalitarian.

The totalitarian model was used to describe societies which are totally controlled by one political force, i.e. dictatorships and other autocratic regimes which exert power through coercive means, but which are also characterized by an ideological core. The model was used to classify repressive political systems (Italy under Fascism; Germany under National Socialist rule; the Soviet Union under Stalin) in the 1950s and well into the 1960s.

Friedrich and Brzezinski in their book Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy, first published in 1956, described the main characteristics of a totalitarian state as: (a) an official ideology for everyone to follow; (b) a mass party headed by a charismatic leader; (c) terroristic police control; (d) a state monopoly on communication; (e) a state monopoly on the possession of arms; and (f) a centrally directed and controlled economy. The political agenda underlying this approach was to juxtapose, quite unfavourably, the Stalinist Soviet Union (which was compared to the Third Reich) and Western democracies (Box 1.1).

Box 1.1 Totalitarianism

Totalitarianism was a child of the Cold War. The hostile climate towards the Soviet Union in the post Second World War period gave credibility to the image of communism as an evil, repressive ideology maintaining an authoritarian regime equal to the nazi and fascist states in the 1930s. The Korean War in the early 1950s, where the Chinese Liberation Army fought with great success against the UN forces led by the United States, helped create a negative picture of the People's Republic which was maintained by the totalitarian model used to analyze Chinese politics.

Barnett's description of the Chinese leadership reflects a similar approach. In his book Communist China: The Early Years 1949–55, he wrote:

The leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) form a tightly knit brotherhood of experienced, competent, devoted, tough revolutionaries. At the top are the members of the Central Committee, who hold key posts in the government and army, as well as in the Party itself, throughout the country. They decide policy and supervise its execution. The fate of China, for the foreseeable future, is largely in their hands. (Barnett, 1964: 6)

When Barnett wrote this, Mao Zedong was ‘still the undisputed leader of the Party’ (Barnett, 1964: 7). Barnett's description of the Chinese system portrays a virtually unrestricted power of the central Party leadership. The structure of the Party, with its network of cells, its strict code of obedience, and its organizational hierarchy, was seen as symptomatic of a ‘totalitarian’ authority tightly controlling every aspect of Chinese society. The influence of the members of the Central Committee, wrote Barnett, ‘is omnipresent, and their decision-making power is well-nigh omnipotent’ (Barnett, 1964: 8).

Popular versions of the totalitarianism model

Totalitarianism as a model in the study of Chinese politics came to occupy an important position in popular ideas about China and especially in journalism. In reportage, the clear-cut image of a monolithic, repressive state with unlimited power to suppress its citizens is very attractive for the simplicity of the argument. The term ‘totalitarianism’ is also often used to refer to individual characteristics of the political system. The use of terror and physical coercion during long periods since 1949, the personality cult of Chairman Mao Zedong, the political intervention in the economy, the rigid exegesis of the official ideology (Marxism-Leninism-Mao-Zedong-Thought), and militaristic traits of social organization, are all crucial elements of a totalitarian system, and they were certainly prominent features of the People's Republic over long periods. However, the totalitarian model was, in the wider perspective, not very satisfactory as a framework for the analysis of Chinese politics. It implied that there was a high degree of power concentration in one person, and that the political system was effective in maintaining central control. The reality, however, seemed to be more complex. The collective leadership seemed not to agree on fundamental ideological and political issues, control from the centre appeared to be less rigid, with the provinces asserting ranging levels of autonomy. While Doak A. Barnett recognized such anomalies within the totalitarian model, he was able to accommodate them within his analysis. However, the model appeared to be fundamentally flawed to those who identified the continuous existence of competing groups or elites within the Chinese leadership. The totalitarian model was soon replaced in favour of analytical frameworks which could offer clearer explanations of Chinese political life.

Four main areas of attention in studies on Chinese politics have been factionalism, interest groups, complex bureaucracies and political economy/ class analysis. Under these headings a large number of overlapping models and approaches can be identified.

FACTIONALISM AND ELITE CONFLICT

The importance of personal leadership in China and the disagreements that were perceived to exist among the Chinese leaders led to the development of factionalism models. The most well-known analysis of leadership conflict in terms of factions, providing a coherent model for the analysis of Chinese politics, is Andrew Nathan's ‘A Factionalism Model for CCP Politics’ (1973). A faction is, according to Nathan, based on clientelist ties, i.e. a maze of individual, personalized ties between a leader and his political supporters (Box 1.2).

Box 1.2 Clientelism in the factionalism model

Nathan's definition of clientelist ties includes seven features. A clientelist tie is:

1. a relationship between two people;

2. a relationship which the partners cultivate with specially selected members of their social networks;

3. based on constant exchange of gifts and services;

4. based on inequality and dissimilarity between the partners;

5. characterized by well-understood, but rarely explicit, rights and obligations between the partners;

6. terminated at will by either partner; and

7. not exclusive—either member is free to establish other simultaneous ties.

Clientelism in this context should not be understood as guanxi.

A leader of a faction may, in his turn, be the supporter of the leader of another faction. Factions are flexible and do not rely on strong formal organization:

The members need never meet, although they may do so. The members' activities in disparate locations and institutions can be coordinated through individual communications with the leader. Indeed, in routine political situations, regularized coordination can be dispensed with entirely, since the faction as a whole can rely on the members' loyalty to the leader to insure that each member works to the faction's benefit. Thus, the faction is capable of the greatest flexibility in seizing political opportunities and in engaging in a general political strategy on the basis of scattered positions throughout a political system or an organization. (Nathan, 1973: 42)

The limitations of factions are the level of communication (and exchange of goods and services) possible between a leader and his supporters, and the number of leaders at different levels that can be involved without distorting the flow of information and the coordination of political action.

The disagreements within the Chinese leadership over core policy issues down through the 1950s and 1960s led political scientists to look for factions working against each other. In the most simple explanation, leader personalities would join together in mutually supportive, albeit shifting alliances.

The model carries some weight since it reflects fundamental traits of the Chinese leadership, especially until the 1978 reforms started. The ruling elite in China consisted basically of those Party leaders who had joined the Long March, and who had gained political posts in the Yan'an period and kept high political office after 1949. Some of the ruling elite had divergent backgrounds. Their relative influence in the leadership originated in their capacity to control segments of the bureaucracy or the military, and especially through their personal links to each other. The system was not based on friendship or representation, but on patron—client relationships. The emergence within the leadership of contending political factions was based on this type of personal tie.

However, such an explanation presumes that the formation of factions occurs amongst a small elite of peers. Therefore, politics, according to the factionalism model, would appear to be conducted in a sphere separated from the social reality of the country, and the actions of leaders would not be analyzed in terms of their response to socio-economic developments. The intra-elite dynamics of the factionalism model present the main protagonists centre-stage, postulate that all action emanates from their collective will, and relegate other social and economic dynamics to the backstage.

CLIENTELISM

Clientelism, as it has developed into a model of analysis in understanding Chinese politics, has built upon the factionalist and elite models but has also gone beyond these. As seen above, the factionalism and elite models confine themselves to analyzing elite-level politics. The focus is on how various groups of those in power or with access to power interact with each other, and influence policy. While both the factionalism and the clientelism models have centred patron—client relationships in the study of politics in China, the emphasis of the two models is different. In the words of one of the foremost exponents of the clientelist model, Jean Oi, clientelism can be seen as ‘a type of elite-mass linkage through which both the state and the party exercise control at the local level and individuals participate in the political system’ (Oi, 1989: 7). The difference between the two models is thus clear. The clientelist model seeks to examine not only the patron—client relationship that exists among the elites of the country, and how that effects policy formation, but also how patron—client relationships affect the interaction between the state elites and the citizens, and how that effects policy implementation. The emphasis is less on formal structures and institutions of power and participation, and more on the informal, personal relationships as means of participation in politics. The focus shifts from the group to the individual as the political actor. This is an important shift because it allows us to see individual citizens as agents in a highly centralized political system like China's; they can be regarded as more than just passive objects of state policy. In this context, it is not necessary to stop at proving the ineffectiveness of formal institutions, but to begin at that point and to see how it is through the process of implementation of policy rather than policy formation that individuals forge strategies for maximizing their interests. It also encourages us to look beyond the structures to the operations of power where institutions are not the only referents in politics.

Clientelism in the village and the factory

Two texts that have been influential in explaining the clientelist model and using it to study Chinese politics are Jean Oi's State and Peasant in Contemporary China (1989) and Andrew Walder's Communist Neo-Traditionalism (1986). Oi's book examines the relationship of the Chinese peasant with the communist state in terms of struggle over the division of harvest. Walder's work features the urban work unit and focuses on two characteristics of industrial relations in communist China: ‘organized dependence’ and ‘principled particularism’. Organized dependence refers to the monopolistic controls that the Party/state, through factory leadership, has over the workforce. This is established through the non-market character of the production unit, and through the Party's political monopoly. Principled particularism describes how the factory leadership exercises that power by establishing and maintaining a relationship of patronage with individual workers, and thus builds up a network of loyal activists who also become sources of envy and dissension within the workforce, further exacerbating the control of the factory leaders. However, the individual worker in relationship with the leaders is not simply a tool in the hands of the management. To retain a place on the workforce he or she must take into account the expectations and needs of the workers and negotiate with the leaders accordingly....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of tables, boxes and figures
• Preface
• Basic facts about China
• Some practical notes
• List of abbreviations and acronyms
• List of Chinese characters
• Map of the People's Republic of China
• 1 Introduction: Approaches to the study of Chinese politics
• Part I: The Making of Modern China
• Part II: Politics
• Part III: The Economy
• Part IV: Society
• Bibliography
• Index