http://www.nytimes.com/ref/college/coll-china-politics.html

This Companion was written by The College of Staten Island's Modern China Studies Group, an interdisciplinary program involving several departments, including Business, English, History, Modern Languages, Media Culture, Political Science, Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work.

China Rises Companion | Overview
Framing the Question

China Rises is a thought-provoking series that provides fertile ground for rich discussion and analysis. The following section offers a multidisciplinary introduction to some of the issues raised by the documentaries, suggesting a variety of lens through which China may be observed. While the intention is to raise awareness about this complex and fascinating nation, it should simultaneously provoke curiosity and interest – and, probably, critical conversations and constructive debates.

To begin our analysis, let's consider the following: Is China creating a miracle or mirage?
How can China's "rise" be understood or assessed? Are we holding China to a comparison with its initial baseline, or to an "ideal" benchmark established by scholars and theorists? Are we asking whether the current development is sustainable and will elevate China to a better end result, even though some setbacks are an inevitable part of this progress?
When there is talk of China's possible "collapse," are we referring to a Soviet-style breakdown that led to the USSR's disintegration into 15 independent states? Or, should we separate the possible downfall of the Communist regime from the disintegration of China as a nation-state?
Finally, to answer the previous two questions, we have to ascertain whether the improvement in China's standard of living has been real and far-reaching. If one can develop a comparative framework, can it be said that, in general, Chinese people are better off or worse-off than a quarter century ago? Also, in comparison to other regions of the developing world, would we agree or disagree with the assertion that China has been doing much better or much worse?

Political Governance

In this section, political science Professor Ming Xia offers a scholarly perspective on the major political issues facing China today. It is divided into the following areas:

China is still a communist country. It is therefore quite logical for outside observers to simply label it as a "monolithic communist authoritarian state," "a totalitarian state," and a "Leninist hierarchy." However, looking deeply, the matrix of power in China is far more complex than the essentialized description found in mass media and even in some standard textbooks. As Kenneth Lieberthal points out, the political system in China consists of many vertical lines ("tiao") and horizontal pieces ("kuai"). To mesh and integrate the vertical command lines and the horizontal blocks is very demanding, so the Chinese Communist Party has insisted on the principle of democratic centralism— which often is the case of centralism without democracy.
However, the gigantic size and underdeveloped economy have long left China in a cellular structure in which factionalism, localism and departmentalism could thrive. After reforms were introduced with an emphasis on decentralization and the retreat of the state from the economy, the traditional system was further fragmented. Some scholars have deemed the Chinese system a "fragmented authoritarianism"(Lieberthal), a "negotiated state" or a "consultative authoritarian regime." In other words, the current Chinese system has created space for autonomy, loopholes for bargaining, and hopes for democratization. Looking inside what was once known as the "party-state," today the Party and the state have been differentiated (for example, the people's congresses at all levels have started asserting their power to provide some checks upon the government and the judicial agencies). Local governments often pursue their own initiatives in defiance of the central directive, and tensions are often created between the center and the localities. In fact, Hong Kong today, as a Special Administrative Region, enjoys the highest degree of autonomy of all other provincial units, but its residents are demanding more. Looking at the state and its environment, the state has to manage a new relationship with the economy, the society, and the global community. The market forces in the economy, the civil society and dissident forces in the society, and international standards (for example, the WTO laws, international human rights values, etc) are pressuring and inducing the Chinese government to make more changes.

The fact that a Leninist Party has engineered China's rise is puzzling as well as adding uncertainty to this rise. It is against conventional wisdom that a communist party would have altered its core ideology and embraced a market economy. For a quarter century, that the marriage of "market Leninism" has lasted and is still going on begs for explanation. As China's rise continues, people have to ask two questions: First, can the current regime with a communist party continue to provide political foundation and institutional support to the soaring economy? Second, if the Chinese economy keeps going on like the past quarter century and expanding the size of a prosperous middle class, will China find a smooth pathway to democracy? At this moment, the CPC continues to insist that it is a valuable asset for China, the Chinese people, and their future. But it has also become evident, that the CPC is fighting against the mega-trend of history along with a few struggling junior partners such as North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba; by insisting that "without the CPC, there is no new China"—namely, the collateral damage resulting from the collapse of the CPC would be the downfall of the entire Chinese nation.

Social Engineers for China's Transformation and the "Visible Hand"
BY MING XIA

There has been an ongoing debate over who is more responsible for jumpstarting and driving forth the unprecedented economic take-off in China. The "spontaneous order" perspective would stress more on the initiative and dynamics from the grassroots, the ordinary people (e.g., the poor farmers defied the ideological taboo to implement the so-called "household responsibility system"), in which the state was only relevant by getting out of the way and giving people more freedom. The "developmental state" perspective would highlight China's economic reforms as a "revolution from the above" and credit the state-led strategy in transforming China's economic order. The men at the helm became an integral part of China's economic story.

No one would deny that China's legend started with a Chinese politician in the 20th century—Deng Xiaoping. The Chinese Communist Party credited him as the "chief architect" of China's reforms. Deng passed down almost all of the highest positions to his protégés—including the Chairman and the Secretary General of the Party, the premiership, the president of the state and the chairmanship of the National People's Congress; but he kept the title of "chief architect." Actually, Deng did not start China's reforms with a blueprint in mind; instead, like a bee who can build a perfect beehive without a premeditated map, Deng was following his accurate instinct to search for power and wealth for his country and his people. Acting more as the "midwife of China's reform" during its initial stage, Deng enthusiastically responded to ingenious initiatives from ordinary people and local leaders and actively assisted the birth of China's economic transformation and take-off. As China's reform deepened, Deng entered his octogenarian stage and acted more as the guardian for the reform he put in course. Harry Harding called Deng's reform "China's second revolution." In this revolution, Deng's historical role is comparable to Cromwell's in England and Napoleon's in the France. Like both, Deng was critical of both defenders of the ancient regime (in China's case the Maoist orthodoxies) and radicals who wanted to go too fast or too far. To some degree, the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre was Deng's lion's roar to frighten away the liberals from shunting his reform off his desired track to a more radical direction. He had little patience for the students' demand for more democracy—especially in the strain of Western-style democracy. But he could not sit idly, watching his reforms being backtracked by the conservatives, either. In 1992, he took his legendary "Southern Tour" to mobilize support for his reform project. On his inspection trip, as a retired statesman he scolded and lectured to his successors from the cities where he started his reform, and goaded them to bolder and faster economic changes. Those instructions were his swan song, an important political legacy left to his successors.

During the early and also most difficult stage of China's reform, two reform-minded leaders assisted Deng and spearheaded his efforts. On the ideological and organizational front, Hu Yaobang, the Party Secretary General (1980-1987), championed the grand debate on "seeking truth from facts" (the so-called "liberation of the mind") and promoted a huge number of young people with fresh ideas into important leading positions. On the economic and administrative front, Zhao Ziyang, the premier (1980-1987) and later the Party General Secretary (1987-1989), arduously implemented experimental reforms in the countryside, urban centers, and the coastal area in almost every aspect of social and economic life. The Special Economic Zones in the Southeast coast region took bolder steps ahead of other regions in the country. Under the so-called "Hu-Zhao New Deal," China started embracing the concept of the commodity economy and later accepted the idea of the market economy. Zhao also attempted to reform the political structure – he intended to be the first communist party secretary in China to restrict its own power by separating the Party from the government. Looking back, we have to say that China experienced a real "Pareto improvement" under which some or all segments of the country were better off and none worse off: the peasants, workers, the intellectuals, and the cadres all benefited from the reforms. This is in a vivid contrast to the economic changes since the late 1990s, in which a huge body of losers was created and expanded.

The 1989 crackdown turned both Hu and Zhao into political taboos in the Chinese discourse on reform. They were blamed for being too lenient on the liberals and young students in China and being responsible for the student demonstrations in 1986 and 1989 (Hu's death directly ignited the mourning activities and gatherings by students at the Tiananmen Square in 1989). From these two leaders, we can clearly see that cleavages existed among the reformers in the leadership. The Western observers often simplistically dichotomize the Chinese leaders into "reformers" versus "conservatives," or "liberals versus hardliners." As a matter of fact, the conflict and division often play out over the scope, depth, and speed of reforms, not the reforms per se. This is why, although the 1989 Tragedy (the Chinese official term is "political disturbance") was a big setback for the more liberal-winged reformers, the reform itself was not abandoned. With hindsight, the announcement of the death of China's reform and the regime then was greatly exaggerated by many commentators.

A clear development pattern can be identified from "Hu-Zhao New Deal" to "Jiang-Li (Peng)-Zhu (Rongji) Triumvirate" (all under the watchful eyes of Deng Xiaoping) and the current "Hu (Jingtao)-Wen (Jiabao) system." In 1980, when the Chinese leaders just started to look outward for lessons and experiences, they carefully encircled four "special economic zones" for experiment. Because all of them are located in the Southeastern coast, one major consideration was to use their geographic proximity and overseas Chinese connections to attract investment from Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. Even if this strategy might not work, all the special economic zones could be written off as a price of experiment for their small size and peripheral status of economy. However, with the help of capital and managerial experiences from Hong Kong and Taiwan along with the state-sponsored investment from Beijing and other provinces, the special economic zones, in particular, Shenzhen became a showcase of successful marketization and emboldened the entire country to follow suit. After the 1989 crackdown, Deng had a stronger urge to shore up the legitimacy of the communist rule by delivering more economic prosperity; so he encouraged bolder and quicker pace in economic reforms. In 1990, Deng decided to deal his "ace card"—Shanghai—in a huge gamble for economic miracles. Ten years ago, Deng bypassed Shanghai for its strategic importance to the national economy that Deng could not afford to take a risk there. Now Shenzhen's success as well as the experiences in the Four Little Dragons (particularly the Singapore Model) assured Deng that by following a market economy Shanghai would be able to reclaim the position of China's economic "dragon head" to lead the national economy fly. Therefore, Shanghai—especially its undeveloped Pudong area—turned into Jiang's pet project where he proved himself capable of managing a new economy and consolidated his power base.

Jiang Zemin, who was summoned to Beijing to succeed the deposed communist leader Zhao Ziyang in the aftermath of the Tiananmen massacre, was forced by Deng to seek more changes. Jiang, a sophisticated, well-rounded but insipid technocrat, wisely deferred to Deng's teachings and regarded himself the "chief engineer" to implement the original intention of the "chief architect." Under his supervision, China's economic change picked up new momentum and produced profound impacts. Robert Kuhn, a Wall Street banker, later documented his contribution in his 2004 work, The Man Who Changed China: The Life and Legacy of Jiang Zemin.
From Shenzhen to Shanghai, the overall strategy was still concentrating on the coastal region to take advantage of the changing global production chains that shifted much labor-intensive production to China. The divide between the coast and inland was created and aggravated by the fast modernization, urbanization, and globalization of the east coast. In 1999, as such disparity increasingly emerged as a political issue concerning the stability of the regime, Jiang Zemin declared that "to develop the great West" was to be a strategic priority for the nation. A huge number of investment flew from Beijing to the Western region, gigantic projects were started one after another, the new city of Chongqing—established as a city directly under the central government in 1997—is one legend in developing the West just as Shenzhen and Shanghai to the coastal strategy. In 2003, the new leadership under Hu Jingtao and Wen Jiabao chose the Northeast as their strategic priority. Since the northeast region is the oldest industrial zone and the marketization process created massive bankruptcy and lay-offs, economic stagnation created frequent social conflict and unrest there. To revitalize the Northeast acquired political urgency. Meanwhile, the Chinese government also proposed a strategy of "the rise of central China" to deal with the economic and social crises in the grain-growing agricultural provinces. In the end, the legitimacy of the Chinese communist leadership hinged upon this performance-based criterion.
Clearly, the Chinese creation of a market economy has been under the visible hand of the government. Like South Korea under Park Chun Hee, Indonesia under Suharto, Taiwan under two Chiangs' and Singapore under lee Kuan Yew, China's economic miracle has occurred and sustained under the framework of East Asian soft-authoritarianism, a combination of "hard government" and "soft economy." Due to the enormity and complexity of China's transition and the term-limit system for the communist top leadership, it is quite understandable that it may take three leaders (Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin to Hu Jingtao, the current Party Secretary and President of the State) to fulfill the authoritarian development stage that other East Asian countries accomplished with one or two dictators. But the logic of East Asian developmentalism had a clear distinction: its final manifestation would be the coming of democratization.

The Communist Party of China and the "Party-State"
BY MING XIA

Indisputably, the Party (the CPC) is still the absolute power center in Chinese politics, even if such absolute control was once weakened under Zhao Ziyang and later tightened up again by Jiang Zemin. Deng Xiaoping made the so-called Four Cardinal Principles sacrosanct in Chinese politics: the party's leadership trumps the adherence to Marxism, socialist system, and the people's democracy and dictatorship. Jiang imposed his overall guideline for China's governance: the Party stands aloof, assumes overall responsibility and coordinates all sides of the government, congress, political consultative conference, and the masses organizations. If the latter are the bones and fleshes of Chinese body politics, the Party is undoubtedly its brain, its nerve center and its sinews. The Party commands, controls and integrates all other political organizations and institutions in China. The Party-state, or "partocracy," accurately captures China's political reality.

The CPC follows the Marxist and Leninist principles for a party of the proletariat. It is a "vanguard party," which means that the Party consists of the most ideologically enlightened and practically devoted few of the society. In China, the CPC now claims 68 million members—although this number easily makes it the largest party in the world, it only accounts for 5% of the entire population. For a longtime workers, peasants and government officials dominated the Party; now more intellectuals, business managers, and other professionals have joined the Party. In 2001, Jiang declared in his speech celebrating the eightieth birthday of the Party that private entrepreneurs, private business owners, self-employed artists, white-collar professionals employed by foreign companies and joint ventures are welcome to join the Party. The power base of the current regime has shifted away from its traditional constituency to the new social strata that represent the advanced force of production and new culture. Some commentators pointed out that the Chinese Party-state has had a right turn although still turning on the left light.

The party membership symbolizes status, power, opportunity and sometimes privilege; therefore, it is extremely difficult to be accepted by the Party and to become a formal member. The wooing to the acceptance may take many years, but it first starts with the expression of an individual's willingness to join. The aspirant often moves closer to the party cell leaders and party members, submits a letter of application, and invites the scrutiny from the Party. To attract attention from the Party, the applicant has to show his or her political activism and correctness, build strong support from the party leaders, win popularity among the ordinary people, and carefully create an image of being selfless and principled. Many times, merely personal connections and bribes can work well. Once the party cell leaders are convinced that the applicant is worth their time and energy, they are going to invite the applicant to listen to some party meetings and participate in some other activities. A veteran party member will also be assigned to act as a liaison between the Party and the applicant. After several rounds of evaluation and sometimes more application letters from the applicant to show the soul-searching process and the catharsis of mind (actually a strategy of self-promotion), the party cell may decide to convene a meeting of the party members to consider the application. With two sponsorships from the party members, the applicant (often one out of eight) can be accepted as a party member with one-year probation. During the probation period, the Party will put on a microscope to examine the applicant, while also mobilizing ordinary people to send their feedback. If the applicant can survive the probation, then after a year, he or she becomes a formal member of the Party. Certainly this process can be very idealistic. As a matter of fact, many people, particularly among the farmers and urban workers, the Party has lost its attractiveness. Many people joining the Party with no ideal but utilitarian purpose—after all, the party membership is still an important passport to opportunities.

The CPC has been plagued by the loss of ideological enthusiasm and the rampancy of corruption among its members for the past two decades, the most recent decade got worse. According to the official statistics, from 1997 to 2001, 124,000 communist members were purged from the Party. In a recent survey among the party members (total 1,131) working at universities and on white-collar professional jobs in Shanghai, 11% did not accept or only partially accept the Party constitution; 31% of those white-collar professionals and 17% of those from universities believed that it is okay for them to have a religion or to participate in religious activities, despite the fact that the communist belief is atheistic. Several high-profile cases revealed that some party leaders have become Buddhists, members of the Falun Gong and followers of many other folk religions. Some officials also invite Fengshui masters or sorcerers to bless government sites or buildings. The clash between the Chinese government and the Falun Gong is a typical case pointing up the threat that the CPC has perceived from a heretical belief system. After the 1999 clampdown by the government, the Falun Gong has organized numberless resistances through low-tech as well as hi-tech methods, within and without China. Since 2004 the Falun Gong published Nine Commentaries on the CPC to discredit its ideology and launched a campaign to call on the Party members to quit their organization. It claimed that up to the first month of 2006, 7 million have left the CPC—including those who are living overseas and once were active members before they migrated. History is still evolving, so at this moment we cannot have a full assessment on the challenge and damage that the Falun Gong has inflicted upon the CPC ideologically and organizationally.

Besides the external challenges, the Party has its biggest enemy within itself: rampant corruption. A few China specialists have concluded that the CPC has actively and effectively put many institutions, regulations, and policies in place to control corruption, therefore, the Chinese communist regime has put the corruption issue behind. However, most China watchers would be less optimistic. Some have argued that corruption has structural causes—the nature of the regime is responsible, or cadre corruption is only part of the institutional involution of the regime; some have concluded that China's anti-corruption efforts have been futile. Hu Angang, a Chinese economist, estimated in 2000 that every year the monetary loss resulting from corruption amounted to 13-16% of the GDP. From January to November 2005, prosecutors nationwide investigated 27,327 corruption cases involving 32,162 officials or public employees. Despite that one NPC vice-chairman, several vice-governors or vice-ministers, many bureau chiefs and more officials at the lower ranks were executed, the trend of corruption has not been slowed. For example, in the year 2005 alone, 13 officials at the ministerial (governor) rank were punished. In comparison to the average number of 16 that officials at the ministerial rank were dealt with from 1997 to 2002, it is hard to say that the Chinese Communist Party and the government have successfully found a way out of this paradox: "To fight corruption too little would be sure to destroy the country; to fight it too much would be sure to destroy the Party."

China Rises Companion | Political Governance
The Governance Crisis and Democratization in China
BY MING XIA

Samuel Huntington once said, "In fact, modernity breeds stability, but modernization breeds instability." As the Chinese state has been sponsoring a large-scale modernization in the nation, it has also faced a series of governance crises. China's modernization is the latecomer's modernization. Its backwardness requires a stronger role and initiative from the state. But the modernization process itself has awakened the societal forces to either capture or resist the state, popular participation has increased, and the state institutions have suffered decay.

Generally speaking, contentious politics in China happens in the following issue areas: (1) In the countryside, excessive fees and taxes, forced take-over of land with unfair compensation, the brutality of local tyrant-officials and the venality of law-enforcement officers often drive the desperate peasants to riots and rebellions. (2) In the urban areas, massive lay-offs by the state-owned enterprises, the loss of retirement pensions and medical health, the forced evacuation of residents from their apartments to give way to new developments cause urban riots and protests, which are mostly joined by workers. (3) The demand for freedom of spiritual beliefs, for example, the Falun Gong movement and the underground churches, often cause the confrontation between the believers and the state officials. (4) The ethnic minority regions' demand for religious freedom, respect, and local autonomy, for example, in Tibetan and Islamic areas, sometimes become focal points of conflict. (5) After returning back to China's sovereignty, Hong Kong has been a hotspot where large-scale protests against Beijing and demonstrations for local democracy are organized once in a few years. (6) Occasionally, political activists organized campaigns, such as the Democratic Party campaign in 1998 and 2003 and the chain hunger strikes organized by rights-defenders in 2006, to demand for political freedom and civil rights.

In responding to these political challenges, from the 1989 curfew against Lhasha riots in Tibet and the Tiananmen massacre against the pro-democracy movement in Beijing, to the 1999 crackdown of Falan Gong, and the 2005 shooting of villagers in Sanwei, Guangdong, the Chinese government often habitually resort to violence. The brutal nature of the Chinese communist system inevitably invites condemnations from the global forces for democracy. After the disappearance of communism from Europe, China has become even more isolated. But, the third wave of democratization stopped at the doorstep of China. Why did China not become democratic? Will China become a democracy? How?

The political scientist Shaohua Hu points out that obstacles to China's democratization arose from five factors: historical legacies, local forces, the world system, socialist values, and economic development. Since China is really a civilization pretending to be a nation-state (as Lucian Pye has posited), the democratic challenge from the West forced the Chinese system to learn from the West in order to maintain Chinese civilization. The civilizational burden often intertwines with strong nationalism, which make the Chinese suspicious of induced modernization might turn into a vehicle of Western colonization. The Western imperialism seemed to confirm such suspicion. Besides, the Chinese economy has generated tangible benefits to the majority of the Chinese population; most of them are content with the status quo if the situation is getting better. Therefore, to democratize China, both positive changes within China and hospitable environment from the global community are needed.

In the West, liberal democrats often expect that the emerging market economy will create a sizeable middle class, who then will become the backbone of civil society and the driving force for democratization. But many Asian specialists have found that the dog does not bark in East Asia: Under the state-guided capitalism in East Asia, the middle class often depends on the state for employment (state functionaries and professionals) and resources (business people) and therefore is not active in opposing the state. This is the case in China, too. Not surprising, the middle class has been sided with neo-conservatism in China since the 1990s. In contrast, the active anti-government forces often come from the workers and peasants who are being marginalized in the market economy and are trying to maintain the values and institutions associated with the socialist past. The New-Left ideology represents this group of people and it does not convince the Western liberals that it is for liberal democracy. The big puzzle regarding China's democratization therefore is that there is no clear driving force.

As a matter of fact, although the Chinese state has been repressive, it is still the largest repertoire of human talent in China. To write off the dynamics of change within the Chinese state would make one lose hope for China's future. At this moment, China's democratization has to come from the synergy and interaction between the Chinese state and elites outside of the state. Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang provide two cases that some Chinese communist officials are able to reach out to the social forces to build a more open political system. Now, the Chinese central leadership has been muted about the democratization of their political rule, but, they have not been hesitant to force their local officials at the village and township levels to face elections on the one hand; and on the other hand, to advocate for more democracy in the global system which is dominated by the United States. If the Chinese elites have to maintain ideological consistency in its governance, the democratic logic that the Chinese government has pushed in both local and international politics must ultimately guide China's national politics.

Since 1987, direct elections have been carried out in villages and townships. Pressure has been building to open up the system at higher level to more competition in order to increase political accountability. There seem to have appeared two routes to advance the democratization process: either to start with the intra-Party democracy and then to expand democracy to the state politics, or to start from the grassroots and then spillover to the provincial and national level political institutions.