The Chinese Communist Party's Capacity to Rule

Ideology, Legitimacy and Party Cohesion

Jinghan Zeng

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137533685
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Relaciones internacionales

Why did the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) not follow the failure of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union? This book examines this question by studying two crucial strategies that the CCP feels it needs to implement in order to remain in power: ideological reform and the institutionalization of leadership succession.

1

Introduction

1.1 Introduction

Since the beginning of human civilization, humanity has been looking for the best form of government. For thousands of years, our political systems constantly evolved with the changing political values and the progress of human civilizations, until the late 1980s – when it was claimed that this evolution had met an end. The collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union appeared to both mark the death knell of communism and suggest the superiority of Western liberal democracy. Since then, Western liberal democracy has been claimed as “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution” and “the final form of human government” (Fukuyama, 1989). It seemed that, sooner or later, Western liberal democracy – the so-called “best” political system and the “ultimate” achievement of humanity – would defeat all other forms of political systems (of inferior quality) and become the only form of government in the world.

Yet authoritarianism has not been eliminated, as many expected it would. On the contrary, its resilience has been posing unprecedented challenges to the overwhelming dominance of Western democracy. Now, nearly thirty years after the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, the communist party in China has posed a strong challenge to Western liberal democracy. Instead of collapsing, as many have expected for decades, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has delivered a remarkable economic miracle. In 2011, China officially overtook Japan to become the second largest economy in the world. With an annual GDP growth rate over 7%, China is widely expected to become the largest world economy within a decade. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), China had, in 2014, already replaced the United States to become the world’s largest economy (IMF, 2014). Now, more than ever before, the world has been wondering whether or even when China – a country governed by an authoritarian regime – will lead the world.

Why did the CCP not follow the failure of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union? The present book examines this question by studying two crucial strategies the CCP feels it needs to put in place for staying in power – ideological adaptation and the institutionalization of leadership succession. It argues that ideology and leadership succession play crucial roles in the CCP’s survival, although these strategies have not received sufficient attention in the relevant literature. In analyzing the continuation of one-party rule in China, conventional wisdom focuses on economic performance. Thirty years of spectacular economic growth led by China’s market reforms have prompted a sizeable quantity of economics and political science literature to link this growth with the CCP’s rule (Krugman, 2013; Laliberté and Lanteigne, 2008b; Perry, 2008; Shambaugh, 2001; Wang, 2005a; 2005b; Zhao, 2009). While economic success is undoubtedly important, this alone is not enough to explain the entire legitimation of the CCP – and China’s economic miracle has created many problems of legitimacy.

More importantly, while the CCP created the economic miracle, it also put its own existence into a fundamental dilemma. According to the CCP constitution, its “highest ideal and the ultimate goal,” and theoretically the only reason for its existence, is to achieve communism (CCP, 2013). If a communist party is not to deliver communism and class victory, why is it there at all? It seems even stranger that a communist party now plans to establish a capitalist society – and, indeed, the mainstream literature misguidedly suggests that the creation of a form of capitalism is a key for the CCP to stay in power. Since the beginning of the CCP’s market reforms in the late 1970s, its rule has been facing a fundamental contradiction between generating economic success by utilizing quasi-capitalist economic policies, and the fact that this is a communist party that supposedly justifies its rule by being the vehicle to deliver a communist society.

Moving away from communist ideals has inevitably led to the decline of communist beliefs in China and the creation of a huge ideological vacuum. In the late 1980s, this vacuum made the CCP’s ideological basis vulnerable when confronted by liberal social values, which gave rise to waves of popular pro-democracy protests across the country. In addition, this decline not only shook the CCP’s ideological basis but also split the party from the inside. From 1979 to 1992, the fundamental contradiction between quasi-capitalist economic policies and the CCP’s commitment to socialism generated endless ideological battles among the ruling elites over whether it was right for a communist party to introduce elements of a capitalist system. Those reform-minded ruling elites (who considered the quasi-capitalist economic policies essential to promote growth) were attacked by other groups who were less reform-minded. This division within the CCP led to a series of serious, negative consequences – notably, inhibiting the decision-making of the party when dealing with popular protests in 1989, a crisis that brought the party almost to the brink of death.

Since official recognition of the market economy in 1992, the cleavage within the party gradually evolved to the issues of how far towards capitalism the CCP should or could go and how to deal with the negative consequences of rapid economic growth, such as corruption and socioeconomic inequality. The “New Left” elites – who are critical of capitalism and prefer a new form of nationalist socialism – favor a larger role for the state in socioeconomic affairs, while the pro-liberal elites, who embrace universal values, have attempted to put forward liberal reforms, not only in socioeconomic affairs but also in the political system, including democratization. By holding high the banner of the New Left and ideological orthodoxy, Bo Xilai then party head of Chongqing took advantage of the ideological division within the CCP to launch democratic, election-like publicity campaigns in order to compete for power, which posed a strong challenge to the unity of the party and the legitimacy of the leadership-succession system in China. This book argues that ideology is by no mean obsolete; on the contrary, in contemporary China it still plays a crucial role in legitimizing authoritarian rule and maintaining party cohesion.

As such, ideological transitions are important not only to maintain pro-authoritarian values and thus legitimacy, but also to maintain consensus within the party and thus the unity of the CCP’s leadership. However, conventional wisdom overemphasizes government performance and pays insufficient attention to ideology. Many consider ideology to be obsolete in contemporary China (Dreyer, 2012: 330, 360; Lynch, 1999: 10; Misra, 1998; Ramo, 2004). As Holbig (2013: 61) points out, “in the political science literature on contemporary China, ideology is mostly regarded as a dogmatic straitjacket to market reforms that has been worn out over the years of economic success, an obsolete legacy of the past waiting to be cast off in the course of the country’s transition toward capitalism.” Generally speaking, the topic of ideology in contemporary China is under-researched.¹

In addition to ideological adaptation, the institutionalization of leadership succession is a crucial survival strategy of the CCP. As mentioned above, since the late 1970s the ideological turn of the CCP has split the party. The danger of divisions within the elite is frequently demonstrated by history: the majority of authoritarian regimes failed, not as a result of being overthrown by the masses, but owing to divisions among the elites (O’Donnell, et al., 1986; Svolik, 2012). The unity of the ruling elites is therefore crucial to regime survival, and a key threat to this unity is a succession crisis.

For an authoritarian regime, successfully transferring power at the top and preventing a leadership split during this process has always been extremely challenging. During Mao Zedong’s rule, an un-institutionalized power system caused endless, fierce power struggles within the party, which indirectly led to economic stagnation and social unrest. Afraid of elite divisions and brutal power struggles, the CCP has made great efforts to settle disputes of leadership succession through institutional channels. Thirty years of institutionalization has made leadership transitions in China more stable, transparent, predictable, and smoother now than ever before. A US congressional report called the CCP’s leadership transition in 2012 “one of the very few examples of an authoritarian state successfully engineering a peaceful, institutionalized political succession” (Dotson, 2012: 4). Dickson (2011: 212) argues that China’s “routinized process for replacing ruling elites is a remarkably rare practice among authoritarian regimes.”

Arguably, this institutional development is important not only to the internal stability of the CCP but also to its legitimacy. It is obvious important to the CCP’s capacity to rule and this capacity is considered as a fundamental inner cause of its legitimacy in the CCP’s discourse, as I explain below. This book shows how the institutionalization of leadership succession helps to maintain regime stability and legitimacy. So, this book establishes that the institutionalization of leadership succession is a key for maintaining the CCP’s internal stability and its ruling capacity to maintain legitimacy.

1.2 Legitimacy and party cohesion

Legitimacy, as discussed in Chapter 2, is a complex term. As Huntington (1993: 46) argues, the concept of legitimacy is “mushy” but is “essential to understanding the problems confronting authoritarian regimes in the late 19th century.” Legitimacy lies in the center of both the history of political philosophy (White, 2005: 1) and contemporary Chinese politics (Gilley and Holbig, 2009; 2010). It provides explanations for the failure of communism and the survival of the CCP.

Popular legitimacy is crucial; however, it is not a sufficient condition for regime survival. Regime survival does not only need the external stability of the regime – the kind of stability that is reflected in popular legitimacy – but also needs the internal stability of the regime, which is reflected in the unity of the ruling elites. The relevant literature largely focuses on popular support but pays insufficient attention to the ruling elites. Indeed, how ruling elites themselves view the regime – a kind of self-legitimation – also matters. As Rothschild (1977: 491) argues, “discussions of legitimacy and legitimation risk irrelevancy if they overlook this crucial dimension of a ruling elite’s sense of its legitimacy and focus exclusively on the other dimension of the public’s or the masses’ perception of that elite’s legitimacy.” Lewis (1984) argues that “it is elite disintegration and the failure of its internal mechanisms of authority that have engendered the more general collapse of legitimacy and the onset of political crises in communist Eastern Europe.”

Following the Weberian typology, the proponents of Weber have widely examined the crucial role of political elites in deciding legitimacy. Therborn (1980: 109) argues that “the really critical factor is a basic consensus among the ruling groups themselves, and consent to their legitimacy by members of the state apparatus.” Bialer (1982: 194) argues that “what is crucial is the legitimacy of these claims to the other centers of power and not their legitimacy among the people who must take the consequences.” The influence of elites and the government is particularly notable in China, which is in the shadow of Confucianism. The cultural traditions of low political participation and high trust in government have made the role of ruling elites more influential. In addition, many relevant quantitative studies heavily rely on the subjective opinions and values of citizens (i.e., surveys); however, how the regime produced its legitimacy claims has not been given a central place. Arguably, the regime’s legitimacy claim is a notable inner cause of popular legitimacy. Thus, the CCP’s ideological discourses that this book studies are particularly important to capturing the regime’s legitimacy claims and its survival strategies.

More importantly, the CCP’s legitimacy and its cohesion are indivisible. Arguably, legitimacy is considered by the CCP as an external manifestation of its ruling capacity. In 2004, the CCP issued a party resolution on strengthening its ruling capacity (zhizheng nengli) that explicitly attempted to gain legitimacy (CCP, 2004). As one scholar of the Central Institute of Socialism read it, legitimacy was the “unspoken word left to the understanding of the audience” of this resolution (Gilley and Holbig, 2009: 341). This resolution stimulated an intensive debate on regime legitimacy among Chinese intellectuals. In this debate, the intellectuals propose a variety of policy suggestions to strengthen the ruling capacity of the CCP and, thereby, its legitimacy, as Chapter 4 shows. Obviously, this ruling capacity is built on the CCP’s internal cohesion. In other words, this party cohesion is a prerequisite of the CCP’s ruling capacity to maintain legitimacy – including promoting economic growth, maintaining social stability, and defending China’s national interests. Therefore, instead of focusing on the masses’ support alone, this book explores the relationship between both the external stability of the regime (i.e., popular legitimacy) and the internal stability of the regime (i.e., party cohesion).

1.3 Existential crises in China?

Nowadays, the international community has contrary views about the Chinese state. On the one hand, some are optimistic about China’s future (e.g., Jacques, 2009). After China successfully held the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and became the second-largest world economy in 2010, and following the 2008 financial crisis that undermined Western power, it seems that the world is waiting for the age of China (Jacques, 2009). According to a Pew research survey (Pew, 2013), nearly half (47%) of American respondents and over half of European respondents – including 71% Spanish, 70% French, 66% British, and 66% German – agree that China will ultimately replace (or has already replaced) the US to become the leading superpower. In this sense, as long as China can maintain economic growth, Chinese leaders should be cheering their success and should take over the world order. On the other hand, many consider CCP rule to be immoral and illegitimate because of its authoritarian nature. Some argue that the spectacular economic growth in China is at the expense of violations of human rights, environmental pollution, and a “Ponzi” economic growth model (Krugman, 2013). Others, in particular the Collapsing China School, doubt the future stability of the regime in China (Feng, 2013a; Pei, 2006; Shirk, 2007), as I discuss in Chapter 3.

In the academic community, Chinese intellectuals and Western scholars have very different views on the CCP’s legitimacy. On the one hand, many experts outside mainland China argue that the CCP enjoys strong legitimacy (Chen, et al., 1997; Fewsmith, 2007; Gilley, 2009; Shi, 2001; Shi, 2008; Tang, 2001; Tong, 2011). This view is robustly supported by various cross-national surveys, including the Asian barometer and the World Values Survey (Chen, 2004; Gilley, 2006; Gilley, 2008; Lewis-Beck, et al., 2013; Li, 2004b; Munro, et al., 2013; Shi, 2001; Tang, 2005; Yang and Tang, 2013). For example, the 2008 Asian Barometer Survey finds that 74% of Chinese respondents responded positively to the statement that “whatever its faults may be, our current system of government is still the best for the country” (Chu, 2013: 5). According to a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Wang Shaoguang (2010b: 139; 2012b), and a professor at the National Taiwan University, Chu Yunhan (2013: 4), the CCP’s strong legitimacy is a “consensus” of “scholars familiar with the field.” On the other hand, Chinese intellectuals are much more pessimistic than this “consensus.” Of 125 Chinese articles on the subject of political legitimacy published in party school journals, university journals, and public policy journals that I studied, over 40% of Chinese intellectuals writing on the subject of legitimacy argue that the regime is in certain forms of legitimacy crises or challenges, while only 1% of these intellectuals consider legitimacy in China to be high (Zeng, 2014c).

Indeed, not only Chinese intellectuals but also Chinese leaders have been seriously concerned about the CCP’s rule. As Chapter 2 shows, the existential crisis has been a constant concern of Chinese leaders. Why are they so pessimistic? What are they worrying about? Why does the CCP think reclaiming legitimacy is essential for them? Arguably, this concern is mainly generated by communist ideology, by the political legacy of Mao Zedong, and by problems caused by rapid economic growth. In Mao Zedong’s era, communist ideology and a cult of personality was the lynchpin of legitimacy in China for a couple of decades until a series of political campaigns and policy failures seriously undermined the regime legitimacy. After Mao Zedong passed away, the party leaders felt ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction
• 2  Existential Crisis of the Chinese Communist Party?
• 3  Popular Legitimacy from the Western Perspective
• 4  Popular Legitimacy from the Chinese Perspective
• 5  Ideological and Political Education in China
• 6  The Institutionalization of the Authoritarian Leadership in China
• 7  Conclusion: A Journey to Popular Legitimacy and Party Cohesion
• Appendix: Coding Manual
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index