China’s Domestic Governing Capacity: Prospects and Challenges

Abstract

Thirty years of reform have brought significant changes not only to the economy but also to the nature of governance and the challenges that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will face in the future. Before the reform program started, policy was decided by a small elite based in Beijing, with Mao Zedong often dominant, and with few alternative sources of information for China’s citizens either with which to assess government performance or to compare China with government performance in other countries. A relatively small percentage of the population was urbanized and a modern middle class was nonexistent. The current situation faced by the CCP is dramatically different with an urban population that exceeds 50 percent, a growing middle class, an economy that is increasingly integrated with global production chains and a population that is networked. This creates new challenges for governance, especially with respect to rising expectations from an increasingly affluent population, and from the challenge of new social media and information flows. The CCP leadership under General Secretary Xi Jinping has clearly identified control over new social media as a significant challenge together with more effectively combatting corruption within the CCP. However, the major factor determining the CCP’s continued rule will rest primarily on its management of the economy, the subject of another paper.