Regimenting the Public Mind

Reviews 253 Lawrence R. Sullivan, editor. China Since Tiananmen: Political, Economic, and Social Conflicts. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1995. xx, 331 pp. Hardcover $60.00, isbn 1-56324-538-8. Paperback $19.95, isbn 1-56324-539-6. China's economic reforms since the 1980s and the remarkable changes fhat have taken place thereafter have been attracting fhe world's attention. The suppression ofthe Tiananmen pro-democracy movement of1989, however, resulted in serious setbacks to the country's otherwise thriving surge toward modernization. Again, China was at a crossroads. What course would China follow after the crisis? Lawrence R. SuUivan, a political scientist, has edited a readable book fhat attempts to analyze the ideological and social developments fhat have emerged during the post-Tiananmen period. This volume includes government documents, individual essays, newspaper commentaries, and important speeches by state leaders. Sources include mainly the foUowing: (1) the major propaganda and theoretical organs of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) such as People's Daily, Beijing Review , and Qiushi (Seeking truth); (2) the provincial, regional, and organizational press; (3) individual addresses ranging from fhose ofthe President ofthe CCP to those by well-known inteUectuals; and (4) articles and commentaries from the principal media ofHong Kong and Taiwan. The 109 documents, covering the period from 1989 to 1994, are divided into four sections, each of which focuses, respectively , on political, economic, social and cultural, and science and technology issues. Following fhe briefintroductions to each section by the editor, the entire book is rich in information that is presented in an original way, with opposing views that invite readers to analyze, criticize, and draw their own conclusions. As SuUivan indicates in his introduction, the events ofJune 1989 "peacefully chaUenged die authority of the government . . . [but] the Chinese leadership has been obsessed with maintaining control" (p. xix). In addition to questions regarding the political future ofHong Kong, the Taiwan issue, international protests over human rights abuses in China, the Three Gorges Dam project, the anticorruption movement, and odier related problems, conflicts over how and to what extent the Chinese leadership should further strengthen its authority in the wake of the Tianamen incident remain the central theme. Four monfhs after the Tianamen crackdown, Jiang Zemin, General Secretary offhe CCP Central Committee , addressed fhe crowds who were celebrating fhe fortieth anniversary of the founding ofthe People's Republic ofChina. His statement set the tone for the© 1997 by University post-Tiananmen CCP strategy. Jiang reiterated that "fhe Four Cardinal Principles ofHawai'i Press^e the foundation offhe nation, whereas reform and opening to the outside world are means ofstrengthening the nation" (p. 23). The lesson diat the CCP drew from the 1989 Tiananmen incident, fhe fall of the Berlin WaU, and the col- 254 China Review International: Vol. 4, No. 1, Spring 1997 lapse of the Soviet Union was that China could not tolerate the other kind ofreform and the other way ofopening itselfto the outside—bourgeois liberalization and total Westernization. The only way to guarantee smooth sailing in China's socialist construction was to tighten the CCP's control over every aspect of society including the government, die müitary, schools, factories, and villages. Democracy within the CCP was seen only as the basis ofa centralism that served to "safeguard the party's unified fighting power" (p. 57). In order to reinforce this centralism, China's paramount leader Deng Xiaoping caUed for the restoration ofthe "fusion ofparty and government"—an obsolete form ofpolitical structure that had existed before China's reforms. Deng's statement, however, was found, by Hong Kong's South China MorningPost, to be contradictory to a speech ofhis in 1941, in which he caUed for the separation ofparty and government and for a higher degree ofmass participation. Obviously, fhe political situation after June 1989 necessitated a shift of strategy in order to secure die absolute power of fhe CCP in directing the reforms nationwide. Interestingly, Deng Xiaoping is here described as a complex man, often contradicting himselfin national policy making. The forty-three documents in diis section also reveal three basic conflicts within the CCP political structure. First, the political climate was largely characterized by conflicts between hard-liners and reformists. The...

The emergence of COVID-19 in the People’s Republic of China, a one-party state, posed a severe threat to the political legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This threat had its origins in the context of a growing rivalry between China and the United States, prompting the CCP to launch an offensive to win the battle for narratives about the nation’s role in the outbreak. Through both traditional and social media, Chinese diplomats carried out an aggressive campaign to demonstrate that China was the solution and not the cause of the pandemic. In addition, the CCP generated a discourse about the superiority of the Chinese political system in containing the pandemic, contrasting it with the response of liberal democracies. This article concludes that although the primary goal of the Chinese media campaign was to shape a favorable opinion of the CCP at home, the party was also concerned with bolstering its legitimacy abroad by courting international approval for its handling of the pandemic.

Rotating to the Top: How Career Tracks Matter in the Chinese Communist Party

While it is widely accepted that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) occupies a dominant position in the Chinese political system, few studies have demonstrated CCP's dominant position based on rigorous statistical analysis. Our paper presents the first such analysis using an innovative measure of regulatory transparency in the food industry across nearly 300 prefectures in China over 10 years. We show that actions by the CCP, while broadly scoped and not targeting the food industry, significantly improved regulatory transparency in the industry. In sharp contrast, food-industry-specific interventions by the State Council, which exercises direct regulatory supervision of the industry, had no impact on regulatory transparency. These results hold in various specifications and robustness checks. Our research contributes to research in China's political system by empirically and explicitly demonstrating the dominating power of the CCP.

In 1948, in anticipation of their victory in the civil war, the communist authorities controlling Harbin City opened a memorial hall called ‘The North East Martyrs’ Museum’ to mark those who had died in the struggle against the Japanese and the Nationalists. The woman guerrilla fighter, Zhao Yiman (1905–1936), occupied a significant part of the exhibition space – lodged, as it was, in the very same premises in which she had been tortured during interrogation by the occupying Japanese twelve years earlier. The major thoroughfare leading to the museum is called ‘Yiman Road’ in her honour. In 1960 a museum also dedicated to her opened in her hometown, Yibin, in the western province of Sichuan and in 1996 a further commemorative building dedicated to her memory was opened in Shangzhi City – the location of key events in her heroic life and early death. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has built and sustained stories of Zhao for decades, consolidating her status as the premier communist woman warrior martyr right to the present. During her lifetime, few people knew her name. Unlike the infamous Aisin Gioro Xianyu discussed in the preceding chapter, against whose Manchukuo state Zhao's forces waged their guerrilla battles, Zhao Yiman only became known years after her death when the People's Republic of China (PRC) commenced its memorialisation of wartime heroes. The PRC propaganda system adopts a ‘total propaganda’ approach – all ages, classes and localities are targeted with carefully constructed, subtly evolving messages using diverse media and formats. As well as the museums and memorial halls, she is the subject of two full-length feature films, multiple serialised comics, poems, paintings, textbooks, websites and biographies. The great wall of narrative surrounding figures like Zhao Yiman recreates war ‘memories’ as emotionally charged pedagogical experiences of political and moral self-improvement. Her status as a guerrilla mother is central to her efficacy in the total propaganda system because it enables the CCP to prompt people's emotional responses around their fears of the integrity of their family units. The CCP positions itself within the propaganda narrative as a supra-parent caring for the national family.

This paper examines China's international communication strategy during the initial phase of the global COVID-19 pandemic. In the spring of 2020, Western governments and media began criticising the systematic lack of transparency and accountability in the Chinese political system in relation to the failed containment of the Wuhan outbreak. Facing an unprecedented reputational crisis, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) mobilised its foreign-language media in an attempt to influence the international discourse on COVID-19. Surveying the English and Chinese editions of the People's Daily, this study identifies CCP discourses aimed at foreign audiences and traces their evolution during the early stages of the pandemic. Overall, the study provides a comprehensive map of Chinese narratives on COVID-19 and generates fresh insights into CCP crisis communication.

In the Chinese political system, according to the constitution, the people’s congresses at the primary level are the only institution which the voters can directly elect. However, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tightly controls the “direct elections” and takes every measure in the elections to prevent grassroots power from entering even the primary-level people’s congresses. In recent years, grassroots power has kept struggling for its legal rights in the “direct elections” held in a few localities. The conflicts between the grassroots power and the authoritarian party in the “direct elections” have become an interesting political phenomenon, a subject deserves close observation and research. This paper studies the background of the independent candidates, their motivations and behaviour in elections. The paper also examines the party’s control in the elections and thus exposes the true nature of China’s people’s congress “direct” elections. The paper argues that independent candidates can have little impacts on China’s political structure at the current stage because of the party’s tight control, but their political participation has the most democratic value, compared with the “reforms” instigated and carried out by the CCP.

Through empirical analysis and conceptual development, this book analyzes the political psychology of Xi Jinping's Anticorruption Campaign and its role in the Chinese political system. Using Nietzsche’s concept of ressentiment and data collected from direct fieldwork, the book analyzes the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dictatorship, revealing that it is prone to extremes, through ideology or corruption, and highlights how the Party’s attempts to address one extreme only leads to the rise of another. In turn, it examines the Anticorruption Campaign in multiple ways including its use to increase the role of ideology in Chinese society, how it functions to concentrate Xi's power, its cultural form as a status reversal ritual, and its continuity with previous communist campaigns and ancient Chinese political traditions. Through each of these analyses, the book identifies crucial mechanisms through which the CCP maintains power through interrelated policies, actions, and their emotional effects. Providing a vital understanding of the CCP, this book will be an invaluable resource to students and scholars of Chinese politics, as well as diplomats and policymakers on China.

Kang Xiaoguang Confucianization: A Future in the Tradition W HITHER CHINA? This question has engaged the attention of China and the world in modem times, and it is all the more urgent and pressing today. Two dominating opinions have taken shape around this question. One holds that the status quo cannot possibly go on for long; the other that China should and certainly will be further “Westernized.” But there has appeared a third voice in China in the twenty-first centuiy— ’’Confucianization,” which declares that China’s future should emerge from its tradition and should be constructed in accordance with the spirit of Confucianism. Why should Chinabe “Confucianized”ratherthan “Westernized”? An answer to this question must address four issues. First, it needs to make clear why the status quo cannot and should not continue. Second, it must show that the competing solution, liberal democracy, has noth­ ing to recommend it. Third, it must put forward its own solution. Fourth, it must demonstrate that its own solution is feasible—that, in other words, benevolent government is not merely utopian. This article is an attempt to answer this central question. I. JUDGMENT OF THE STATUS QUO The study of history is the best way to understand of the status quo, but there is no need to go back too far. For our purposes, it will be enough to go back to 1978. Here, I wish to give a brief summary of China’s reform process over the past nearly three decades. social research Voi 73 : No 1 : Spring 2006 77 Institutional Changes Deng Xiaoping conceived many of his ideas on reform in the 1960s and the 1970s. These ideas reflected Weber’s rational logic, instead of liberal democracy. It should be borne in mind that Deng Xiaoping was a pragmatist who put his ideas into practice once he was in power. In a word, Deng was a communist, in pursuit of the “self-improvement of socialism.” He did not wish to totally deviate from the tradition of the Chinese Communist Party. But, of course, his reform went much further than he had expected. In China’s reform, the greatest pressure comes from the economic sector.With Western examples setting a baseline, those in power need to demonstrate their achievements in economic growth to the governed so as to legitimize their rule. After more than 30 years of cold war, a “common understanding” has been gradually acknowledged that a market economy is better able to promote economic growth than a planned economy. Thus, Deng Xiaoping’s reform was directed mainly at the economic sector. Of course, he also launched a series of reforms in the political and social sectors. The market economy reform has indeed led to economic growth in China. In turn, this surprisingly high growth rate over 20 successive years has truly supplied the Communist Party with “legitimacy based on economic achievements.” This is also a decisive contribution to the political stability of China. Butthe impactofmarket-oriented reform is byno means restricted to the economic field! The Chinese political system has also undergone significant changes with the market economy gradually replacing the planned economy. The first indication of this political change is that China has turned from a totalitarian state to an authoritarian or a posttotalitarian state. One of the substantial changes is that the govern­ ment is no longer controlling all economic activities—that is, society’s most important activities (economics) and most important resources (wealth) have gradually escaped government control. This is extremely important, and one can never stress it too much. Separation of the state from society begins to emerge with the separation of economic activi­ ties from the government. Furthermore, China’s social formation has 78 social research also changed significantly. Now family life and the personal activities of individuals are no longer under the complete control of the govern­ ment as was the case in the Mao Zedong era. Nowadays, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will generally leave you alone ifyou do not chal­ lenge its authority. Even ifyou do, it will still leave you alone unless you openly challenge it in the public sphere. The CCP has turned to passive defence from its previous active...

States traditionally maintain power by means of either performance-based legitimacy or promulgating ideology. Mass persuasion can be used to both promote a regime’s ideology and persuade the public that it is performing the tasks of government effectively and equitably. Most states use a combination of these two approaches to maintain political stability. In China, since the violent crackdown on the 1989 protest movement, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government has stressed an old slogan to set a new line on its format for maintaining political power: “Seize with both hands; both hands must be strong.” This means that the CCP now bases its legitimacy on both economic growth and a renewed emphasis on persuasion, or what in Chinese terms is known as propaganda and thought work. The two “hands” in this slogan are strong and intertwined, as the key themes of propaganda and thought work in the current period are promoting economic growth, building market confidence, and engaging in economic thought reform. In an extraordinary process of cultural exchange, in recent years China’s propaganda system has deliberately absorbed the methodology of political public relations, mass communications, social psychology, and other modern methods of mass persuasion commonly used in Western democratic societies, adapting them to Chinese conditions and needs. China’s modern-day propaganda and thought work is now market friendly, scientific, high tech, and politics-lite. Focusing on the years from 1989 to 2007, this article uses the case of contemporary China to examine the role of mass persuasion as a force for maintaining and, in China’s case, reclaiming political legitimacy to rule and introduces a new term to understand the China model, popular authoritarianism.

In China today, a daily battle is waged between the state and society over “what is fit to know”. This contest reflects and constitutes a central contradiction in Chinese politics—between the needs of a rapidly modernizing economy and pluralizing society on the one hand, and the desire by the Party-state to maintain absolute political power on the other. This article explores this contradiction, but primarily from the state side of the equation. Following a brief discussion of the history and roles of political propaganda (in China and elsewhere), this article focuses on the scope, structure and mechanisms of the Chinese propaganda system today. It also considers the politics and personalities involved in the propaganda system, particularly in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Propaganda Department. Finally, it assesses the overall strength and efficacy of the propaganda system today, considering in particular the impact of market forces on the media. It concludes that, though the efficacy of China’s propaganda system has eroded considerably from its Orwellian past and is being buffeted by the information revolution and globalization, the system remains effective in controlling most of the information that reaches the Chinese public and officialdom. In many ways it epitomizes the broader processes of atrophy and adaptation that characterize the Party’s rule today. 1

T CHINESE Communist Party's theoretical organ Red Flag summed up the achievements and significance of the Tenth Party Congress, held in Peking on August 24-28, 1973, in the following terms: The Congress fully reaffirmed the great victories achieved on the road of unity and victory of the Ninth Congress, angrily indicted the crimes of the anti-Party Lin Piao clique, summed up the basic experience of the struggle between the two lines, especially of the struggle to break up the anti-Party Lin Piao clique, and protected as well as developed the great fruits of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, thereby enabling the whole party further to consolidate its unity on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Tse-tung's Thought. This is a great victory of Chairman Mao's proletarian revolutionary line. It is also a great victory of our country's dictatorship of the proletariat.

The concept of political participation is central to any comparative study of politics because it addresses the crucial question of how citizen activity is related to public policy, power, and legitimacy. The Chinese Communist Party's concept of political participation originated in that of the Soviet Union but acquired some distinctive features on the road to power. The Vietnamese Communists on achieving dominance in the North in 1954 announced neither a people's democratic dictatorship nor a dictatorship of the proletariat. The Vietnam Fatherland Front, which absorbed the National Front for the Liberation of the South after the war, remains as as ever. The Vietnamese have had no Great Leap Forward or Cultural Revolution and have looked askance upon these experiments. In Vietnam the active political minority appears to affirm the regime's values more enthusiastically than the people, but what needs to be studied is how this affirmation affects the minority's, or the Party's behavior.

Chinese economic development has been driven, among other factors, by the gradual expansion of the private economy and the establishment of Chinese-based multinational corporations recognized as “champions” of the Chinese economy. At the same time, the Chinese Communist Party strives to maintain proper coordination mechanisms over the Chinese private economy, in order to ensure the harmonization between private and public interests. Does such policy direction, pursued by the Chinese leadership, rely on legal mechanisms? Does the Chinese Communist Party have legal instruments at its disposal in order to carry out coordinative functions concerning the private economy? The issue, although acknowledged by several scholars, has been rarely the object of a comprehensive legal analysis, taking into account the interactions between the different legal formants of the Chinese system. The purpose of this paper is to sketch an outline of the main legal mechanisms empowering the Chinese Communist Party to supervise and coordinate the activity of private economic operators. Starting from the assessment of some recent developments, embodied in «Opinions on Strengthening the United Front Work in the Private Economy in the New Era» issued in September 2020, the analysis will try to identify some of the most relevant legal provisions aimed at ensuring Party supervision over the private economy, in particular Art. 19 of the Company Law. Such provisions will be analyzed not only within the context of the recent developments of Chinese economic law, but also with regard to its practical applications by courts, in order to define the scope, in concrete, of Party activities in the private economy. The information gathered and analyzed will then be taken as conceptual basis to draw some conclusions regarding the structural role of the Chinese Communist Party in the development of Chinese commercial and economic law.

In contrast to the coalitions examined in the two preceding chapters, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), as the agent of social transformation, is not predominantly concerned with economic issues. The function of social transformation is to restructure and reform society and social relations. In most revolutionary societies in the twentieth century, and certainly in China, the Communist Party is the special institution of social transformation. The Communist Party, once it seizes power, also provides overall leadership in the political system and mediates the relationships among the other intrastate coalitions. The Communist Party, then, is both above the other coalitions (this is particularly true of the central leadership) and the embodiment of one particular coalition. In its capacity as the organization charged with social transformation, the Communist Party is different from other ruling parties in one-party states. In Benjamin Schwartz's elegant characterization, the mystique of the Communist Party lies not in its organizational structure but in its transcendent status as the incarnation of the will of History and in its universal, messianistic, “proletarian” mission. From this stems its claim of infallibility and utter disinterestedness. It was this that provided the sanction for totalitarian intervention in every corner of life. After completion of the “Socialist Transformation of Capitalist Industry, Handicrafts and Commerce” and the collectivization of agriculture, the CCP had apparently completed its mission. Following the Soviet model, there was nothing left to be transformed – China had arrived at socialism (state ownership).