China's Changing of the Guard: The Limits of Authoritarian Resilience

Like Regime, Like Newspaper: Comparative Analysis on Newspaper Industries across Taiwan Strait (1949-1958) Abstract Ever since 1949, across Taiwan strait, the Republic of China on Taiwan ruled by Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuo Min Tang, KMT) and the People’s Republic of China on Chinese Mainland ruled by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were antagonist to each other for a long time. Far-reaching changes were mandated both in Taiwan and Mainland China by the two regimes while communications between people on both sides of Taiwan strait were banned, and later vanished. Thus, to all professions across Taiwan strait, two groups of numerous experiments were performed at the same time. The experiences and consequences of these experiments influenced the working conditions, lives and cultures on both territories and evidenced distinction between the two national systems. As the most important media at the time, newspaper industry was highly regarded by both KMT and CCP. Although in the beginning of the political separation, newspaper industries across Taiwan strait were quite similar, the many newspaper policies raised by the two governments molded different environments for the industry. Experiments of newspaper industry under different regimes were taken place from then on. Within ten years, the newspaper industries evolved seperately across the strait, and around 1958, divergent newspaper systems appeared. Newspaper industry in Mainland China became a typical example of the industry under totalitarian regime, while newspaper industry in Taiwan showed itself a model of the industry under authoritarian regime. Base on the above historical background, what was the mechanism that caused and shaped different newspaper industries across Taiwan strait? How did newspaper industry respond to totalitarian or authoritarian ruling? What factors that differentiated authoritarianism from totalitarianism can be reached through the examples in newspaper industry? These questions reckon the necessity of comparative study on the same industry in two isolated and widely different regions during the same time period. This dissertation tries to be contributive to the answers. Newspaper industry is considered and studied here with its entire functionality. Not only are news reporting, editing and editorial writing examined, but newspaper’s producing, sales and management are also studied. Comparative historical analysis is applied as the main methodology with the assistance of knowledges from journalism, political science, sociology, business administration and accounting. Acknowledging newapapers as the “tongue and throat to the party” and tool for propaganda, CCP spared no effort to control newspaper industry. However, it’s means and artifices were nimble and flexible. From 1949, CCP elaborated a government-owned hierarchy newspaper system. Party leaders directed newspapers owned and operated by central to local governments, while tolerated temporary existence of some privately-owned newspapers. Following the establishment of the regime, CCP seized newspaper industry’s resources such as manpower, materials, financial supply, news announcing, circulation channels and market throughout Mainland China. The number of remaining privately-owned newspapers and circulation and advertising agent houses declined sharply and eventually died out in a few years. When CCP had monopolized the newspaper industry, consequently, it had monopolized the social capitals contained in the industry. Newspapers in the totalitarian country became part of the regime itself. On the other side of the strait, the retreating and exhausted KMT faced difficulties inside and outside Taiwan. For surviving, the adoption of a two-handed policy, with both suppressions and compromises was inevitable, which made the ROC of Taiwan an authoritarian country. Government’s publication moratorium and journalistic taboos set walls around newspaper industry, but also kept potential competitors away. Among the coexisting, fixed-numbered newspapers, those owned by government or KMT were in leading positions in 1949. However, due to the realism of authoritarianism, some “reservations,” such as social and crime news, popular supply and circulation markets, and advertisements had been made by the government for other newspapers to maneuver their future with free competition in these areas. Privately-owned newspapers utilized the opportunities created by these “reservations” to compete capitalistically. In ten years, resources contained in Taiwanese societies were gradually excavated and transferred to privately-owned newspapers when social capitals were being accumulated by them; meanwhile government- and KMT-owned newspapers began to ebb. Preparation for privately-owned newspapers to meet the further economic development and foundation for them to exceed government- and KMT-owned newspapers were established in this period of time. Ten years were short in history, yet long enough to create two completely different newspaper industries in two areas that were politically separated and isolated to each other. It was the decade right after the split in 1949 that the two regimes across Taiwan strait, CCP’s totalitarian and KMT’s authoritarian, formed newspaper industries based on each one’s political ideology. So ten years are long enough to have a specific newspaper industry appear under a regime’s specific ruling. Sensitive to its environment as any other news media is, newspaper industry is a product of the regime that brings about the media industry’s environment. Like regime, like newspaper.

Conclusion:Stronger and More Professional Courts—But Still Under Party Control Stanley Lubman (bio) Since Xi Jinping became president of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 2013, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been energetically promoting law reform, which has been on an uncertain path since the 1980s. The current structure and policies of the party-state present several formidable obstacles to the progress of law reform on that path: • The CCP’s determination to maintain its firm hold on Chinese society, as evidenced in its treatment of law as subservient to policy, politicized control of the courts, and repression of speech and action regarded as expressing dissent • The fragmented authoritarianism of the current political system, often manifested in local governments’ deviation from policies and laws issued from Beijing • The influence and impact of Western institutions, as reflected in demands for an enforceable constitution, expanded judicial power to limit the authority of government agencies, and greater transparency of these agencies The five roundtable essays focus principally on the reforms declared in the decision issued at the conclusion of the Fourth Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in October 2014. As Kjeld Eric Brødsgaard points out in his essay, the Central Committee addressed law reform in the fourth meeting even though “party building” would have been next in the customary sequence. The proposed reforms articulate conceptions of the rule of law and the relationship between the party and the operation of the political-legal system (as the courts, procuratorates, and police are commonly referred to because of the closeness with which they operate). In considering these reforms, the roundtable essays raise an issue that has been crucial since the PRC was established in 1949—the uneasy tension between central control over the Chinese bureaucracy and the operation of local governments. Close attention is devoted to how yifa zhiguo, commonly translated as rule by law, is applied and interpreted in [End Page 38] the authoritarian governance of China today. In criminal cases, the courts cooperate with the police and procuracy rather than acting independently, and they are subject to the supreme authority of the party leaders whenever those officials view any issue as touching on party dominance. The essays share a common approach in discussing specific reforms in the operation of the courts, namely recognition that in practice implementation must be carried out within limits imposed by party rule. Decision-making within the courts is structured to support the superiority of party policies and concerns. A prime example is party sensitivity to actions and speeches that are deemed to threaten social stability. Among the concerns that overshadow more than just the work of the courts is strong opposition to the expression of Western values in discussions of law outside the courts, including educational institutions. A particularly important issue addressed by several proposed reforms is the extrajudicial influence of party and government officials on the operation of the courts: One reform would change the locus of responsibility for financing basic-level courts and choosing their judges from local governments to the next highest, provincial levels of government. Another step is a requirement that local court officials report in writing any extrajudicial or otherwise improper attempt to influence judicial outcomes. Discussion here of the essays in this roundtable is grouped under three basic themes: the concept of “rule of law” embedded in the proposed reforms, a summary of those reforms, and reflections on the near-term future of the reforms. Rule of Law—With Chinese Characteristics All five contributors to this roundtable recognize the force and impact of the party’s dedication to maintaining its supremacy and grasp on the Chinese economy and society. Donald Clarke states the essence of the reforms clearly: “the Fourth Plenum Decision contemplates no fundamental reform in the relationship between the legal system and the CCP.” Brødsgaard concludes that “upholding the leadership of the CCP is a necessary precondition for rule according to the law and constitution.” The authors also recognize the party’s anxiety about perceived threats to “social stability.” In this connection, Carl Minzner cites the recent promulgation of a draft law on foreign NGOs that places them...

The impact of Deng Xiaoping's leadership on Chinas foreign relations was as great as on its domestic politics. The exit of a ruler of Deng's stature potentially clears the way for the kinds of momentous changes that occurred in Chinese foreign policy after Deng succeeded Mao Zedong to the paramount leadership. But such fundamental change has not occurred in the immediate wake of Deng's death in February 1997. While Jiang Zemin's need to consolidate his position may exacerbate tensions on certain issues between China and some foreign powers, particularly the United States, the long-term trends in Chinas foreign relations are generally unaffected by the leadership transition. Even in maintaining its present course, however, post-Deng China will likely arrive at crossroads which have significant and uncertain consequences for its foreign relations, and indeed for peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region.It is useful at the outset to identify some of the important elements of Chinas foreign relations that have changed with Deng's passing and equally useful to point up those which have not.Changes and ContinuitiesTo be sure, Deng's death changes the environment of foreign policy making in the People's Republic of China (PRC). The era of ultra-paramount leaders such as Mao and Deng appears to be over. With Deng'sThis article was written when the author was a Research Fellow at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, Canberra. efforts to systematize and decentralize the leadership structure and with the evolution of the Chinese Communist party (CCP) from a revolutionary to a conservative, managerial party, major foreign policy decisions are now the result of consensus-building among several top- ranking officials.To oversimplify, PRC elites may be divided into two camps: conservatives and moderates. The conservatives favour limited and gradual economic liberalization. They believe reforming the Chinese economy too rapidly and allowing foreign economic interests to penetrate too deeply could cause unacceptable damage to the PRC's sociopolitical system and 'spiritual civilization.' They are also highly sensitive to what may be perceived as infringements upon Chinese 'sovereignty' and do not think such infringements should be overlooked out of fear of offending Chinas foreign trading partners. In contrast, moderate Chinese elites favour relatively swift and broad economic reforms because they believe that only fundamental changes will allow China to bridge the gulf with the developed countries and that the benefits of rapid growth are widespread enough to enable the country to endure some temporary pain and dislocation while laying the groundwork for higher overall living standards for the next generation. Moderates are also more inclined to accept political compromises with powerful countries such as the United States for the sake of harmonious relations and of Chinas economic development. Because Deng was a moderate and a powerful bulwark against a policy driven by hyper-nationalism, his death does not bode well for the important Sino-United States relationship. While Jiang is in many respects a protege of Deng, he does not yet appear to have a political vision or agenda of his own. Instead, he acts rather as a broker among other powerful groups and factions. He may be less committed to Deng's philosophy and less able than Deng to bend the system to his will. Through 1997, however, Deng's moderate agenda was still on track. Jiang and the president of the United States, Bill Clinton, met in Washington on 29 October to patch up their recently strained relations, and the CCP announced further market-oriented economic reforms during the 15th party congress in September.Although he carries the titles of president of the PRC, chairman of the Central Military Commission, and general secretary of the CCP Central Committee, Jiang does not command the authority of his predecessor. …

This dissertation examines the motivations, logic, and functions of media control in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Rather than telling the history of media control in modern China, or giving a comprehensive account of the techniques employed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to control the media, it investigates the origins of the CCP’s theoretical approach to the media, as well as the consequences of the resulting concepts for practical media work in the PRC. The first half of the thesis tracks the genesis of the Party’s media concept and reconstructs the conditions that contributed to its rise in the first half of the twentieth century; the chapters in the latter half follow this concept in its implementation through a number of case studies from the early 1950s through the late 1990s. Since the day of its founding, the CCP has placed great emphasis on questions of media and propaganda; after 1949 the party-state has claimed full control of the Chinese print, broadcast, and electronic media. Asking for the reasons behind this claim, I argue that it must be traced back to the Party’s desire to bring about the transformation of human consciousness and to create an environment conducive to this process, a utopian project informed as much by the Leninist version of Marxism as by Neo-Confucian ideas of education and state-society relations prevalent in the late imperial era. This project and its underlying fundamental assumptions have survived – in greatly transmuted form – to the present day and continue to inform the strict control of the Chinese media, even when such controls clash with other political and socio-economic interests of the Party-state. I propose to take the media as a variable to measure changes in the CCP’s approach to governance. The Party’s handling of the media serves as a mirror of state-society relations; consequently, the investigation into the media provides us with information on the CCP’s conceptions of governance under changing circumstances. I argue that over the past twenty years, the CCP has successfully altered and reinterpreted its vision of the state and its position therein; it has adopted a more flexible set of methods to achieve its fundamental political objectives. At the same time, however, the ultimate goals of the Party – originally formulated in Yan’an – have changed remarkably little.

Reviewed by: Mao's Generals: Chen Yi and the New Fourth Army Peter O. Hefron (bio) Lanxin Xiang . Mao's Generals: Chen Yi and the New Fourth Army. Lanham, New York, and Oxford: University Press of America, 1998. xi, 223 pp. Hardcover $37.50, ISBN 0-7618-1129-x. Lanxin Xiang, Professor of International History at Geneva's Graduate Institute of International Studies, has written a well-researched work that is part biography of Chen Yi and part military history of the Chinese Communist Revolution. It traces Chen Yi's career from radical student to founder and commander of the New Fourth Army (NFA). It is also a military history of the NFA, dealing especially with its pivotal role in destroying the main power base of the Guomindang (GMD) in central and eastern China during the 1947-1949 period. One of the book's strengths is Xiang's use of his interviews with surviving members of the NFA as well as his utilization of newly published primary sources, mainly from the People's Republic of China (PRC). The history of the Eighth Route Army, created by the veterans of the Long March, is well known. Xiang provides us with an in-depth look at what happened to those scattered Chinese Communist Party (CCP) guerrilla units in Southeast China that the CCP Central Committee left behind at the start of the Long March. From these units and their commanders arose the New Fourth Army. He traces the evolution and unification of these units during their three years of isolation from Mao Zedong's Yan'an headquarters. Communications were reestablished in late 1937, parallel to the creation of the second CCP-GMD United Front. From the surviving thirteen thousand "Red Bandits," Mao in Yan'an, Chen Yi and his guerrilla cohorts in southern China, and the Guomindang fashioned the New Fourth Army from October to December 1937. Xiang gives a detailed analysis of the chief battles of the NFA as well as of the controversies between Mao and the NFA leadership over correct military and political strategy. The NFA soon became a microcosm for the factional rivalry between Mao's real and imagined enemies within the CCP, ranging from the pro Stalinist Comintern group to potential rightists among CCP military officers. The NFA ostensibly harbored both varieties. The NFA also served as the arena for strategic debates between Mao and the NFA's leadership, soon personified by Chen Yi and a number of his generals such as Su Yu, Ye Fei, and Huang Kechang. At issue were three matters: Should the CCP continue to rely on Mao's guerrilla warfare strategy or escalate permanently to conventional mobile warfare using regular CCP troop units? By 1947, mobile warfare was favored and successfully practiced by the NFA. To do otherwise, Chen felt, would extend the civil war by allowing the GMD to dominate the battlefield. [End Page 248] Should the NFA follow Mao's periodic desire to rebuild the CCP guerrilla bases south of the Yangzi River or follow Chen's strategy of taking the revolution to the GMD's strategic heartland north of the Yangzi River? Xiang discusses this seesaw debate in detail. Finally, should the CCP's chief goal for the second CCP-GMD United Front be to fight the Japanese invaders or to use it as cover for the CCP to expand its territory, troops, and population at the expense of the GMD? Unlike the other two issues, this latter debate was easily won by Mao. Soon most of the NFA leadership accepted Mao's view that the anti-Japanese war was secondary. CCP expansion, even at the risk of restarting the civil war, was necessary if Mao was to defeat the GMD government after the Western Allies defeated Japan. Xiang includes an analysis of Mao's pre-1949 purges of his CCP opponents, most notably the anti-Bolshevik purge of the early 1930s and the 1942 rectification of both Rightists and Cominternists. Mao's egocentric determination to become "China's Stalin" through periodic purges, regardless of their impact on the revolution, is a forerunner of post-1949 Maoist excesses. Inevitably these issues focus the author's attention on the credibility...

����� �� With the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) having emerged from its Sixteenth Party Congress in November 2002 with a new leadership and an updated program, what is the outlook for the political system that it controls? The ease with which the recent turnover of power was handled bespeaks an unprecedented degree of institutional stability within China’s political elite. And yet the CCP has for some time now been watching its grassroots organizational strength ebb away, the victim of a number of stresses that have been generated by the Party’s progressive integration with a rapidly changing society. The CCP’s policies of “reform and opening” have meanwhile had unintended consequences that have further weakened the prospects for its continued political monopoly: Due to an expanding private sector, the Party no longer controls where people live and work; due to the spread of internet access, satellite television, and alternative media, it no longer controls what information people have or how it is disseminated; and due to a combination of larger disposable incomes and political liberalization, it no longer controls what people do with their spare time. To manage these consequences, the Party has adopted a new strategy of control. As necessary as this strategy has been, it has effectively reoriented the Party relative to Chinese society, and in a way that raises a question of long-term survival common to many a liberalizing authoritarian regime dominated by a single party: Will adapting to a new economic and social environment strengthen or actually weaken the Party’s hold on power? Bruce J. Dickson is associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. He is the author of Red Capitalists in China: The Party, Private Entrepreneurs, and Prospects for Political Change (2003) and Democratization in China and Taiwan: The Adaptability of Leninist Parties (1997), and is associate editor of the journal Problems of Post-Communism.

The Tenth National People's Congress (NPC), which closed on 18 March 2003, marked the completion of an historic leadership transition in China. For the first time in the history of the People's Republic of China (PRC), the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) completed a smooth transfer of power to a new party leader. The NPC, together with the Sixteenth Party Congress (held in November 2002), saw the retirement of the post-Tiananmen leadership and the appointment of a new generation of leaders. Sometimes labelled the ‘fourth generation’ leadership, they are not well known outside China and are only now beginning to travel overseas. This article looks at the backgrounds of three key members of the new leadership and tries to assess what their policy priorities might be, and what style of leadership we can expect.

After the Second World War, a bipolar world, known as the Cold War Era, has been clearly formed between the Western Bloc and Communist Bloc while the United States and the Soviet Union at the peak on each side. In Eastern Europe, the United States was restrained and felt helpless about Soviet expansion in this area with the perception of Yalta system. On the other hand, in Asia, with the breakdown of talks, an all-out war resumed. A Chinese civil war fought between Kuomintang (also as KMT or Chinese National Party) and Chinese Communist Party (CCP). At the end of 1948, KMT has occupied the inferior position. In the early period of 1949, CCP forces crossed the Yangtze River and successfully captured Nanking, the capital of KMT’s Republic of China (PRC) government. On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the People’s Republic of China (PRC) with its capital at Beiping, which was renamed Beijing. Chiang Kai-shek and millions of Nationalist Chinese retreated from mainland China to the island of Taiwan. Confronted with the CCP takeover of mainland China, the United States came to reformulate its China Policy which later marked a turning point in Sino-American relationship during the period of 1949 to the middle 1950. In June 1948, the leader of Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito, was officially denounced and his party, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY), was ejected as a member of the Cominform by the Soviet Union. Since the West branded Tito a Soviet puppet for his loyalty and constancy of faith to Stalinism, the Tito-Stalin Split presented a whole new realm of possibilities to the United States for its dilemma in china—“Chinese Titoism.” With the influence of Stilwell Incident over Sino-American relationship and the facts of Tito-Stalin Split, Truman made an about-face change to U.S. China Policy in 1949. By the early 1949, the Truman Administration has already been making plans to diverge from Chiang and his KMT such as the publication of China White Paper; at the same time, Truman Administration keeping making chances to have conversations with the CCP. By meeting and negotiating with the CCP officials, Truman Administration attempted to disunite Communist China and the Soviet Union, expected Mao to be the “Asian Tito,” and then Communist China can joint forces with the United States to fight against the Soviet Union, especially in the Asia-Pacific region. Until the outbreak of Korean War in June 1950, the United States finally realized that what it faced is hostile china along with the Sino-Soviet partnership. By applying Graham T. Allison’s three decision-making models, namely, the Rational Actor Model (RAM), the Organizational Behavior Model (OBM), and the Governmental Politics Model (GPM) as the theoretical structure and basis, the thesis would step by step explore the decision-making process of Truman Administration in engaging China to counter the threat from the Soviet Union during the period of 1949 to the middle 1950 through the perspectives of the rational assessment and choice on national interest, struggles between/among organizations based on different target and organizational culture, and pulling, hauling and bargaining games among relative bureaucrats. In addition, the thesis also applied the principles from Alexander L. George’s book, Presidential Decision-making in Foreign Policy, to aim at examining how President Truman’s, who has the final say, character, personality, value and world views made effect in the decision-making process of the target case study. In the process of theory confirming, the thesis discovered that by the period of transformation of Chinese regimes in 1949, the Tito-Stalin Split of 1948 presented the United States a new inspiration for the Communist World, that is, the Eastern Bloc is not a rigid “Iron Curtain.” Truman Administration considered that Titoism may set its roots upon China, the Yugoslav-Soviet Conflict could be a replay situation that occurred in mainland China, and both would put the strategic thought—Engaging China to counter the Soviet Threat—into practice. Nevertheless, from the historical perspectives, this kind of strategic thought seemed over-optimistic, which did not conform to fully rational considerations. However, with regard to the background of the early Cold War Era and the suspicion between the Truman Administration and KMT, the alternative that the United States took reflected the principles of “bounded rationality model.” As a result, by examining the decision-making process of Truman Administration in engaging China to counter the threat from the Soviet Union during the period of 1949 to the middle 1950, what the thesis explored not only the facts about the Sino-American relationship in this period, but also the continuity and change of Truman’s China Policy along with its cause and effect.

Lecturer in Political Science, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. The research for this article was begun on a post-doctoral fellowship at the Centre for East and Southeast Asian Studies, Lund University, Sweden, and completed with the help of a research grant from the University of Canterbury.CCP[Symbol Not Transcribed] [copyright]China in the 21st century is a post-communist society with a communist government. How does the Chinese Communist party (CCP) maintain its political acceptability as it goes about dismantling the socialist system? How can the government maintain popular support when the uniting force of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology is spent and discredited? And what has taken the place of communist ideology? Since the two major political watersheds of the last ten years of the Mao era and the dramatic events of 1989, the CCP has undergone a repackaging, similar to the re-invention of the British Labour party under Tony Blair.(1) The CCP would like to extend its rule over China indefinitely; to do so, it is attempting to move from a revolutionary party to a political party. In the post-1989 era the outward symbols and the all-important name brand CCP[Symbol Not Transcribed] [copyright] remain, but the content and meaning of the party's activities have changed significantly.Rather than the revolutionary romanticism of the Mao period, 'scientific guidance' is the new theme of CCP rule. Party strategists now acknowledge the collapse of faith in Marxist revolution and in the dictatorship of the proletariat and Marxist economics, but they have yet to find another means to justify the one-party state in China. The new economic and political goals of the post-Mao era are symbolized by the Four Cardinal Principles and the Four Modernizations of Deng Xiaoping. In practice this has meant adopting marketization and other capitalist style systems - but never calling them that - while maintaining the CCP dictatorship. Post-1989 and throughout the 1990s, Prime Minister Jiang Zemin attempted to forge a new consensus in China, a logic for continuing CCP rule indefinitely. The party leadership is determined that the CCP will avoid the fate of the Communist party of the Soviet Union and that it will learn from its mistakes.(2) Party thinktanks are also studying the fate of other long-term one-party states, such as Mexico, and trying to learn from their mistakes and successes. In 1999 Jiang Zemin announced the 'three represents,' which called for the party to represent the 'advanced social productive forces, the forward direction for China's cultural advancement, and the truest representative of the fundamental interests of China's vast population.'(3) Now party leaders are refining notions of turning the CCP into a 'party for all the people' (quanmin dang). At meetings for senior leaders at the resort of Beidaihe in September 2001, Jiang hinted that the CCP's long-standing goal of class struggle had been abandoned. He said that the party had to open its door to the 'new classes' of private business people and professionals and that in the current era business people and professionals had displaced workers and peasants as the 'vanguard' of society.(4)Propaganda is playing a central role in the repackaging of the CCP. Propaganda - publicizing the government's activities and educating the population - has always been an essential element of the CCP hold on power. The Central Propaganda Department (Zhongyang xuanchuanbu) of the CCP sets guidelines for the Chinese media, film, drama, art, news, literature, and education and disciplines those who break the rules on what can and cannot be presented in those media.(5) The propaganda system (xuanjiao xitong) remains one of the key groupings of bureaucracies within the Chinese political system.(6) This article surveys the modernization of the propaganda system in China and examines continuities and new developments in the system, particularly attempts to manufacture consent for the re-invention of the CCP. …

In the People's Republic of China (PRC), the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has remained stable despite frequent popular protests. Focusing on environmental protests, we attempt to explain how the CCP has utilized domestic news media to deal with protests and ensure regime stability. We chose five major protests against Para-Xylene (PX) and analyzed all of the People's Daily Online (PDO) articles thereon since 2007. From the Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping governments, PDO's collective portrayal of the anti-PX protests has dramatically changed from a symbol of democratic progress to an impediment to national industrialization and social stability. The systematically orchestrated media framing demonstrates that, instead of indiscriminately suppressing information on protests, the party has deliberately chosen when and what to permit and what images to project onto the protests. This article provides new insights into the CCP's media strategy for popular protest and sheds light on how China's authoritarian regime has maintained political legitimacy and social stability despite a considerable level of public discontent and deepening political oppression.

Reviewed by: Finding Women in the State: A Socialist Feminist Revolution in the People's Republic of China, 1949–1964 by Zheng Wang Aminda Smith Finding Women in the State: A Socialist Feminist Revolution in the People's Republic of China, 1949–1964 by Zheng Wang. Oakland: University of California Press, 2017. Pp. xv + 380. $85.00 cloth, $34.95 paper, $34.95 e-book. I recently attended a lecture by a well-known China watcher who is often cited for her expertise on Chinese Communist Party (CCP) policies related to women and gender equality. When an audience member asked whether there were contestations, over antifeminist policies, between the Party leadership and officials in the Women's Federation (Funü lianhehui 妇女联合会, or Fulian), the speaker responded by claiming that the Fulian cannot be considered a feminist organization as it is simply an arm of the Party. While this claim is not entirely false, it is misleading. Moreover, such a position is all too common in the reportage and scholarship on the People's Republic of China (PRC): the CCP is often portrayed as a thoroughly patriarchal, Borg-like monolith, just as masculinist and oppressive to women as any other modern state power, despite its early claims to the contrary. Thus, Zheng Wang's forceful and convincing argument to the contrary makes her new book a crucial intervention in the fields of PRC history and the history of Chinese feminism. As her title suggests, among [End Page 408] Party members and PRC state leaders, Wang finds committed feminist women, who truly endeavored to bring about a socialist feminist revolution. Finding Women in the State, organized into two parts and eight chapters, considers the work of Chinese Communist feminists through a series of cases. Because Wang's argument requires the close reading and unpacking of extremely rich and detailed source materials, her chapters are quite dense. And her discussion is so wide-ranging that one sometimes senses at least two different books in this one volume. But in the end, all of the pieces coalesce around Wang's answer to an important historiographical question: how do we evaluate the CCP's famous claim to have liberated women, epitomized in Mao Zedong's all-too-oft-quoted pronouncement that "women hold up half the sky"? The research conducted over the past several decades suggests one answer: Chinese women were, and remain, partially liberated—thanks to the whims of a male-dominated and patriarchal Communist Party that nevertheless maintained its rhetoric supporting gender equality and thus sporadically promoted women's rights when doing so did not undermine other Party goals. Wang shows, however, that what appears to be a series of half-hearted and superficial concessions made by a masculinist state are actually evidence of hard-won victories achieved by women working in the Women's Federation and other Party-state units; these feminists were truly committed to the Maoist claim that women's liberation was central to China's socialist revolution. Wang does not deny that the sites in which state feminists worked, such as the Women's Federation, were inseparable parts of the Communist Party. Indeed, it was enthusiasm for socialism's liberatory promise that led these women to join the revolution. Those feminists who held positions within the PRC state certainly demonstrated their loyalty to the Party. Crucially, however, Wang shows that cadres and leaders who did women's work (funü gongzuo 妇女工作) also saw themselves as quasi-independent actors, dedicated to opposing patriarchy in Chinese society and in the Communist state. And their pursuit of a bona fide feminist agenda caused repeated clashes between state feminists and other Party members, including those in the central leadership. This book traces the histories of those state feminists committed to women's work. It demonstrates that while their battles were all uphill and against strong opposition from many Party men, [End Page 409] state feminists fought hard and sometimes successfully fomented real change for Chinese women. Wang reveals that the effects of state feminism can be seen everywhere during the socialist period, even in high-level Party policy and propaganda. She also argues, however, that historians must search for feminism in PRC history because it...

China’s daily life and legal system, which is a written legal system, are similar to those of Korea. However, China’s ideology and state system are very different from those of Korea. As China’s identity and fundamental system, socialism is a firm constitutional principle, and the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party(CCP) is a core constitutional system. Although the Communist Party, which is a state-run organization under the Chinese Constitution, is not listed as a state body in Chapter 3 of the Constitution, the CCP ZhangCheng, which is recognized as a higher-level standard of the Constitution, stipulates the Communist Party’s state leadership. The fundamental systems of the Chinese Constitution include the leadership of the CCP, the People’s Congress, the leadership status of Marxism, and the absolute leadership of the party over the People’s Army. The fundamental system is the framework of China’s unique socialist system. The CCP’s leadership is China’s highest principle and fundamental system implemented in all areas of the country, including the constitutional system, and the CCP is the constitutional institution at the top of China’s constitutional system and state operation. Not all constitutional institutions or legal systems in China can escape from this. The same is true of the rule of law. China, which has a Party-State system, emphasizes the rule of law by elevating the rule of law to a constitutional principle in the 21st century. However, the Chinese-style rule of law, which only works under the constitutional principle of leadership of the CCP, is closer to the rule of law on the outside. The National Commission of Supervision, which became a constitutional institution due to the amendment in 2018, is also a constitutional institution to strengthen and maintain the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. In the end, China’s purpose of emphasizing the legal rule of law and establishing a national inspection committee as a constitutional institution to strongly promote the anti-corruption movement is to further strengthen the leadership status of the Chinese Communist Party with the support of the people through the achievements of the anticorruption movement, but not to practically implement the rule of law.

At the Eighteenth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) early in the fall of 2012, China will formally begin the last phase of the transition to a new cohort of party leaders, what by the now conventional reckoning is referred to as the “fifth generation”.’ The party congress will be the first step in inaugurating these successors, with those heading the government to be announced at the subsequent National People’s Congress in early 2013, and the transfer of civilian leadership of the military (Chairman of the Central Military Commission) possibly taking another year or more. But in China’s political system the selection of a new CCP politburo standing committee, especially its leading figure, the party’s general secretary, is the key step in the succession process. Based on the current posts he holds and the role he has recently played in ceremonial activities at home and abroad, the consensus is that Xi Jinping will be the man to head this next generation of political leaders in China. What are the implications of this leadership transition for China’s foreign policy going forward? Do the personal backgrounds or professional career trajectories of the individuals in this cohort suggest they will have a distinctive set of foreign policy views? If so, are their views likely to change China’s foreign policy-making process or the policies it produces?

Throughout the history of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), disagreement has existed concerning the extent to which Chinese Communism might be considered authentically Marxist. In general, most of the available literature tends to simply accept the Chinese Communist self-identification as Marxist. No binding consensus among independent Sinologists, however, is found and resistance has taken on a variety of forms throughout the history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—some partisan and some genuinely analytic. The academic literature produced during the entire period of CCP rule in China has been characterized by wide differences in the acceptance of its Marxist authenticity. It has always been tacitly or explicitly accepted that the Marxism of the CCP at its founding in 1920–1921 was in a form acceptable to the Bolshevik rulers of revolutionary Russia. Having been founded directly through the influence of the Third (or Leninist) International, the CCP had to conform to the Bolshevik interpretation of Marxism. Since Lenin had taken “creative” liberties with the original doctrine, some have maintained that the Marxism of the CCP had never been truly Marxist. To add further difficulty to any analysis of the Marxism of the CCP, it is generally understood that Mao Zedong, who gradually assumed the leadership of the CCP, was not particularly well versed in any variant of Marxism. Over the years and under the pressure of circumstances, Mao delivered varied formulations of his revolutionary ideology. How much those formulations accorded with any variant of Marxism became a matter of interpretation. Some scholars hold that by the time of the “Great Leap Forward,” Mao had devised his own ideology. All of this speculation generated controversy within the CCP leadership. By the time of Mao’s demise in 1976, the doctrine of a “second revolution” animated Deng Xiaoping and his followers. It is still a matter of considerable controversy whether that post-Maoist doctrine, in any sense, is Marxist in content or aspiration.

Editor's Note