One-Party Rule and the Question of Legitimacy in Contemporary China: preliminary thoughts on setting up a new research agenda*Gunter Schubert, Ph.D., is Chair Professor of Greater China Studies at the Institute of Chinese and Korean Studies, University of Tuebingen, Germany. His research focuses on political and social developments in Greater China, local governance reform in the PRC, cross-Strait relations, Chinese

Abstract

Most scholarly research takes for granted that political legitimacy in contemporary China is precarious and that the current regime suffers from a legitimacy crisis only superficially covered by economic development and nationalism. Political reform—branded as zhengzhi tizhi gaige—is not considered viable and usually discredited as too limited and manipulated by the Communist Party as to deserve its name. Consequently, the impact of these reforms on the current regime's legitimacy is under-researched, arguably blinding us for a better understanding of its resilience. This article argues for taking seriously the possibility of zhengzhi tizhi gaige engendering critical degrees of political legitimacy for the current regime. It proposes a new research agenda of micro-political research which should thoroughly address the relationship between different reform measures and the public's responses to them. A conundrum about legitimacy is that most people sense what it is, but its most expected causes and results both correlate only loosely with it insofar as attitude surveys or elections can measure it. This understandably makes behavioural researchers nervous. Yet social science can use information from expressed normative intentions, as well as from conduct. Relying on the hope that a researcher can understand the consciousness of the people being studied is an unsure way to draw conclusions—but so is its alternative, relying only on direct observations of behaviour and testing them against hypotheses that neglect ideas not constructed by the researcher.1 1. Lynn T. White, ‘Introduction—dimensions of legitimacy’, in Lynn T. White, ed., Legitimacy: Ambiguities of Political Success or Failure in East and Southeast Asia (New Jersey et al.: World Scientific, 2005), p. 26.