Chinese Communist Research Articles

Lips and Teeth: China’s Buffer Thinking Toward North Korea

ABSTRACT Chinese officials characterize the bilateral relations between China and North Korea as ‘lips and teeth’ at times and most China scholars would also agree that North Korea is China’s buffer state. Despite the popularity of accepting this ‘buffering relationship’ between the two countries, few scholarly works explain this relationship in depth. What does ‘China regards North Korea as a buffer state’ mean? When and under what conditions did the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders begin to view North Korea as a buffer state? Most importantly, how did such a buffer view shape China’s behavior when North Korea’s existence was endangered? The purpose of this article is to shed more lights on this unique geopolitical relationship forged in blood. It argues the CCP leaders’ first view on the Korean Peninsula was nationality minority. It was the Korean War that fundamentally changed the way the leaders perceived the value of the peninsula, from a non-geopolitical to a geopolitical one—North Korea is a buffer state keeping a hostile force away from the Sino-North Korean border. Evidently, China’s buffer thinking toward North Korea was one key factor contributing Chinese military and diplomatic protection over North Korea during the first North Korean nuclear crisis.

From Rebel to Ruler: One Hundred Years of the Chinese Communist Party by Tony Saich

As one of the largest and most powerful political organizations that has ever stood on earth, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is both a crucial actor in and a main product of China's tortuous and turbulent quest for modernity. The CCP's successes, failures, explorations, and transformations not only profoundly shaped the trajectories of the Chinese society and the lives of billions of Chinese citizens but were also an integral part of the twentieth century global history, marked by revolutions, world wars, nationalist movements, and economic globalization. Despite its tremendous significance, however, the CCP remains largely an enigma to many foreign observers. Although an increasing number of journalists, policy practitioners, and academics are now in the business of “China-watching,” the enthusiasm for deciphering CCP's current policies and action is often not matched by an adequate command of knowledge about the Party's past, from which its current visions, preferences, and organizational practices are originated.

Copyright Protection of Red Culture: Taking the Red Museum as The Starting Point

Red culture is the general term for the advanced culture formed by the Chinese Communist Party to lead the Chinese people in the process of struggle, and the Red Museum is the main carrier of red culture. However, in the background of the new era, the Red Museum is facing the dilemma of various copyright protection. The reasons can be attributed to the incomplete legislative system, the lack of special red cultural protection law, the corresponding system and mechanism, the two-rail protection system for judicial administration, which makes it difficult to achieve the balance of red culture development and protection. This article is based on the status of copyright protection of the Red Museum, analyzes the specific reasons for infringement, and proposes corresponding response strategies for the problem to help the copyright protection of the Red Museum, thereby promoting the continuous innovation of red culture. Red resources are the most precious spiritual wealth, and red blood is the source of spiritual strength for Chinese Communists in the new era. In order to inherit the red gene, many red museums will create works in their collections for a second time. However, due to the specificity of red culture itself and the influence of the historical background, the copyright protection of red museums is faced with problems such as difficulties in the identification of works, complicated attribution of works' rights, abnormal licensing process of works, blurred boundaries of fair use practice, and single choice of existing remedies. The traditional way of copyright protection has been unable to meet the needs of copyright protection of red museums, so the author puts forward new ideas for the protection of red culture from the perspective of copyright protection of red museums.

The Politics of COVID-19: The Political Logic of China’s Zero-COVID Policy

From the initial outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan in late 2019 until December 2022, China implemented stringent infection prevention and control measures known as the Zero-COVID policy. Western observers and some Chinese intellectuals have questioned this rigid policy, but few studies offer a comprehensive overview of the political reasonings behind it. This article positions the Zero-COVID policy in a broader historical context of the Chinese Communist Party’s regime maintenance, revolutionary legacies, and political mobilisation. It analyses the political reasonings behind this policy from three dimensions: system, actors, and approach, and provides accounts of the politics of the pandemic. The results reveal that the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party was caught in a dilemma. The Zero-COVID policy is used to bolster legitimacy of the regime; however, it also set traps in which the Chinese government risked losing the public’s trust. The negative outcomes of the policy were underestimated by the Chinese leadership, which believed in its ability to balance the cost and benefit of this policy for the sake of maintenance of its rule. The politics of COVID-19 mirrors China’s authoritarian politics in general.

Simulating territory: the rise and demise of Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan as an imaginary regional formation

ABSTRACT The leadership of the People’s Republic of China has crafted several creative territorialization strategies designed to consolidate the administrative control and extend the geopolitical influence of its ruling Chinese Communist Party. This article focuses one such strategy aimed at three distinct polities – Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan – by examining the bureaucratic establishment of an imaginary regional formation that spans them, and its suture to the “One Country, Two Systems” formulation of variegated sovereignty. I propose that this suture constitutes a novel geopolitical strategy of simulation in the service of territorial expansion. Material devices to implement the strategy include mobility and residence permits, while discursive tactics include the reattribution of statements by past leaders to match the new imaginary formation. However, rather than forging cultural unity and compelling territorial unification, the intensification of the simulation corresponded with a spike in self-determination sentiment and demonstrations in both Hong Kong and Taiwan. This case shows that by fabricating an imaginary regional formation, a state can facilitate the multiplication of different bordering schemes between and within territories it effectively administers, while at the same time press irredentist claims against a different and de facto independent state, with explosive outcomes.

Towards a Green Nationalism with Chinese Characteristics?

ABSTRACT This paper examines the concept of green nationalism in the authoritarian context of China, where the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has adopted the rhetoric of ecological civilization as a means of promoting environmental protection and securing global legitimacy. The authors argue that the CCP's performance legitimacy is closely linked to its ability to address environmental concerns in the context of climate change, and that the development of green nationalism is a rational choice for leaders seeking to maintain this legitimacy. However, the authors also highlight the role of actors such as social entrepreneurs, academics, and environmental NGOs in promoting green nationalism from the bottom-up. Using constructivist political theory, the paper explores how the intersection of different green narratives at various levels can be used to rethink the nation and make claims to legitimacy. Overall, the paper contributes to theory-building by providing a framework for understanding the complex relationship between environmental protection, nationalism, and authoritarian politics in China.

Sanjiao Heyi and Tibet

This paper considers Chinese Communist Party policies in Tibet from Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist perspectives. I first explain how these three traditions are unified in the sanjiao heyi, but I contend that this practice has been neglected in favor of state repression. I then elucidate Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism with respect to their general principles and application in Tibet. I conclude that a fuller embrace of the sanjiao heyi where Confucian tenets are balanced by insights from Daoism and Buddhism would cultivate an anti-oppressive response to governmental control.

Xi Jinping's Pursuit of Absolute Security

Xi Jinping's Pursuit of Absolute Security Xia Ming (bio) On October 22, 2022, the Twentieth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) concluded with an endorsement to Xi Jinping's third term. It shattered the key legacy of Deng Xiaoping on political reform, namely the abolition of lifelong tenure for leading cadres in 1980. Under Xi's watch, a constitutional coup was completed. It started with its 2013 "top-down design" symbolizing a "superstructural" reaction against the dynamic economic base, followed by the creation of the Central National Security Commission (CNSC, established in January 2014) and the revision of the state constitution to remove the term limit for the state president and vice-president. At the crowning moment of the Twentieth Party Congress, Xi had snatched all important powers into his hand and extended his dictatorship into an indefinite future, from the Chairman of Everything to the Chairman of Everything Forever. The public humiliation of his predecessor Hu Jintao who dutifully handed all his power to Xi can be viewed symbolically as Napoleon's coronation: Instead of being bestowed the crown by the Pope, Napoleon crowned himself. However, this dramatic change of course in China's political development was not without strong headwinds. While taking up the mantle, Xi inherited a flagging economy: in 2012, China's gross domestic product (GDP) growth dropped below 8 percent, henceforth, it has been on the skid. Considering under the Market-Leninism, the legitimacy of the communist rule relied heavily upon its economic performance, Xi's dismal track record on the economy, especially both the 2015 stock market crash in China and the 2017 trade war with Trump, could undermine Xi's power base. But what explained his reversal of fortune when he triumphed in a "winner-takes-all" manner and assembled a team filled with all his yes-men? In this essay, I would like to propose an explanation: through the top-down institutional design, Xi and his proteges had successfully [End Page 331] engineered a paradigm shift in Chinese governance, namely, a developmental state metamorphosizing into a security state. Security takes precedence over everything. The Twentieth Party Congress Political Report conspicuously highlighted this new mantra: "security" appeared 91 times ("national security" 29 times), and "stability," another code word for strong-handed statism in the Communist jargon, appeared 20 times. "Security" replaced "growth"; "Struggle" (22 times) diluted "reform." The goal of Xi's envisioned national security system is to "build a comprehensive, well-linked and interactive, three-dimensional and efficient national security protection system." It has the following features. Security Is Comprehensive Xi's comprehensive understanding of security has encompassed food, energy, supply chain, cyberspace, political ideology, regime, and overseas Chinese interests. The last category should be considered with the principle of jus sanguinis in China's nationality law; therefore, overseas Chinese could be the target of long-armed transnational law enforcement. For example, although the Hong Kong publisher Gui Minhai had been naturalized into Swedish citizenship, he was captured in Thailand and later transferred back to China for a trial for publishing a book entitled Xi Jinping and His Seven Lovers. In 2020 he was sentenced to 10 years in jail without being granted any consular service from Sweden. Xi's regime has asserted its sovereignty over the Internet; therefore, it does deem any critical speeches and oppositional activities outside of China as subversive to its national security, which can automatically apply its domestic security law and criminal law. Security Is Indivisible Since Deng set China's foreign policy to "hide the light and bide the time," China had kept a low profile to avoid taking a leadership role or confronting the United States in a major crisis. In 2010, then state councilor Dai Bingguo outlined a defensive nationalism by focusing on China's three core national interests: stability of Communist leadership and socialist system; sovereignty, territorial integrity, and national unification; and sustainable economic growth. Entering Xi's era, China has become more aggressive, and its core national interests have expanded [End Page 332] omnidirectionally and are more explicit. In particular, any criticism of the Communist regime and its leaders (Xi is the inviolable one...

The CCP after the Zero-Covid Fail

China has two repressive systems that exist simultaneously: the highly coercive and surveilled system in Xinjiang, and the trust-based model of everyday repression prevalent throughout the rest of the country. The trust-based model has undergirded grassroots governance in China and facilitated the routine implementation of Zero-Covid. Drawing on a protest event dataset, I analyze the key characteristics of the covid protests erupted in November and December of 2022, before situating them in the larger context of China’s political future under Xi Jinping’s rule. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has responded to the protests with a combination of concession and repression. But neither the carrot nor the stick is able to fundamentally address the deep-rooted social problems or halt the tide of dissent. Coupled with structural economic challenges, these protests could be the harbinger of a new era of contentious state-society relations in China, the seeds of which were sown years ago–only precipitated and underscored by the CCP’s covid debacle.

"May 4th Movement" of 1919 in speeches of Chinese Communist Party's leaders

Object of the study is the image of the May 4th Movement of 1919 in the official interpretation of history of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in PRC. The goal is to trace changes in the interpretation of the Movement in speeches of Chinese Communist Party's leaders on the occasion of its anniversary. To do this, author conducts qualitative and quantitative content analysis of the relevant speeches of 1979, 1989, 1999, 2009 and 2019. There are five main conceptual blocks present in every speech: attitude towards tradition, assessment of past mistakes of CCP and role of Mao Zedong, "spirit of May 4th Movement", development goals and youth policy. In the course of analysis, changes in content of these blocks are traced. Thus, ideological transformation of PRC is viewed in the context of changes in official interpretation of a significant historical event. Memory of this event in China is filled with various meanings, including themes of democracy and youth rebellion, inconvenient for the ruling Communist Party. Author comes to the conclusion that at least since late 1990s CCP has begun to rely on nationalism as a new source of legitimization of its power. In the analyzed speeches it can be seen how, with a greater emphasis on the patriotic component of the "Movement", other meanings associated with it, primarily democracy and science, have fallen by the wayside. At the same time, there has been a transition from rejection of traditional culture to its acceptance.

Between Scylla and Charybdis: Land Reform and Local Agents Under the Chinese Communist Regime

Between Scylla and Charybdis: Land Reform and Local Agents Under the Chinese Communist Regime

范文瀾의 학술궤적과『中國通史簡編』저술 배경 - 중화인민공화국의 흠정사서는 어떻게 탄생했나? -

This article aims to reveal the politicization of Marxist history in the founding period of modern China(PRC), by following Fan Wenlan’s academic trajectory. Fan’s academic career began with studying the Chinese traditional classics at the Peking university. He partook, however, in progressive movements in 1920s, with a close relation to the Communist party, and engaged in the anti-Japan resistance in 1930s. When political circumstances made the resistance impossible, he joined the Communist party in 1939 and moved into Yenan: It may be inferred that he agreed to shape a new model of the Chinese national identity, reexamining the anti-Japan resistance and the Chinese tradition. At that time, the Chinese communists needed their own historical narrative as an ideology to establish a new regime founded upon Mao’s authority. Fan’s Brief history of China served that purpose.BR Fan’s Brief History imitated the Soviet History, written upon the Stalinist line, which determined the Chinese official line. Accordingly, Fan based on the Five Species Social Form theory, denies the Asian production mode theory. He also accepted the doctrine of class conflicts in history and replaced the idea of stagnation of the past with the developmental point of view. Unlike the Stalinist line, however, he confined the history of China to Han Chinese, which originated from the Qin and Han empires. Fan’s approach left behind two tasks; How to forge an idea of people, including minorities in China, and how to overcome the prejudices against Asia presupposed in the doctrine of the Asiatic mode of production.

Peter E. Hamilton. Made in Hong Kong: Transpacific Networks and a New History of Globalization.

In Peter E. Hamilton’s history of Hong Kong, he coins the word kuashang, or “straddling merchants”(17), a play on the familiar term huashang, which refers to Chinese businessmen in the diaspora. Hamilton’s kuashang are generations of Hong Kong elites who first fled to the British colony in the wake of the Chinese Communist Party’s rise to power in the 1940s and 1950s, linking Hong Kong to the wider world in two significant ways. First, the kuashang led a turn away from British institutions towards American education, resources, and business practices. Secondly, the kuashang brought global capital, technology, and business to China during its era of reform and opening. For Hamilton, kuashang describes both a class of individuals and their strategies to advance their families and accumulate wealth. Made in Hong Kong: Transpacific Networks and a New History of Globalization is first and foremost a prosopography of the elites—both businessmen and academics—who drove Hong Kong’s development of light industry, built its system of higher education, and initiated China’s reengagement with global capitalism.

Assembling stories tweet by tweet: strategic narratives from Chinese authorities on Twitter during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT Combining computational and qualitative methods, this research presents a novel approach to the analysis of China’s digital diplomacy. The study explores the main strategic narratives disseminated by the Chinese Communist Party on Twitter during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. To identify the narratives, a sequential design was conducted. First, topic modelling was implemented to a sample of 189,708 tweets in English published by 163 Chinese authorities from January 1st, 2020, to March 11th, 2021. Second, the strategic narratives framework was applied to distinguish thematic and structural patterns among the most representative tweets of the main topics revealed. The findings expose how China tried to rationalise challenging events in accordance with its pre-established system and identity narratives. The antagonism to the West, the promotion of a new style of global leadership, the rejection of criticism, and the legitimation of projects abroad characterised China’s digital endeavours to influence international audiences.

Analyzing the “Entanglement” of the Soviet and Chinese Models of Alternative Modernity in J. Arnason’s Historical Sociology

This article examines approaches towards analyzing the “entanglement” of modern societies in sociological and historical literature. Differences between G. Therborn’s and J. Arnason’s approaches are highlighted and Arnason’s perspective on “alternative” communist modernity is discussed. The interaction of the USSR and China represents an example of entanglement of alternative modernities. As Arnason demonstrates, in the 1920’s the Soviet model of state-building was seen by various political forces in China as a case of successful imperial restoration. In addition, he highlights the role of ties to China in Soviet politics. Chinese communists adapted Soviet patterns of totalitarian control before even coming to power. After 1949 there was a further adaptation and radicalization of the Soviet model in China. At the same time the rivalry between the USSR and China was largely a product of their imperial legacies. According to Arnason, in post-Maoist China a combination of patterns of capitalist development, elements of Marxist-Leninist political practices and ideology, as well as a selective revival of Confucian legacies all went beyond the Soviet model. Arnason characterizes how Chinese leadership was influenced by the example of economic development of other East Asian countries and examines the rivalry between the USA and China in the global geopolitical context.

Chinese Media Representation of the SCO: A Study of People’s Daily and Global Times

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is one of the first international organizations in which the PRC played a key role. However, according to some researchers, over the past 20 years the Chinese leadership’s interest in this mechanism of international cooperation has decreased. This article explores the place of the SCO in Chinese foreign policy by analyzing the representation of this organization in the PRC’s media - Chinese-language publications in the newspapers People’s Daily and Global Times , which both belong to the Chinese Communist Party. Such focus allows better understanding the value of the SCO to China and its position vis-á-vis other Chinese initiatives in Central Asia. The authors use methods of quantitative and qualitative content analysis, namely counting the frequency of single words, identifying and counting the most common frames, and discussing the ways these frames are constructed. Frame analysis demonstrates that the articles focus on the achievements of the SCO in solving regional problems, while existing difficulties are ignored. The SCO is represented as an important element of China’s foreign policy, along with the Belt and Road Initiative, while the details of their interaction are not discussed. It should also be mentioned that the SCO is framed as an association of countries opposing Western hegemonism and advocating a new system of international relations. An extremely positive representation of the SCO serves legitimation of the political regime in the PRC: the articles focus on China’s role as a leader in the SCO and its successes in addressing domestic problems, such as poverty reduction and fighting the coronavirus infection. This narrative is often created by quoting the opinions of high-level foreign politicians and average citizens.

Chinese Anti-Westernism on social media

The Chinese Communist Party and its supporters are increasingly using social media platforms to shape China’s public image. This online image is a means of strengthening domestic nationalism and of projecting “soft power” abroad. This paper examines various forms of anti-Westernism that are central to this image-making. It analyzes several recent topics—the Belt and Road Initiative, climate change, the COVID-19 vaccine, the Beijing Olympics, and the conflict in Ukraine—on the r/Sino subreddit page of Reddit and compares them with two online news outlets, the South China Morning Post and China Daily. The paper focuses on how these media frame the contest between a rising China and a failing West, so creating a discourse that competes with the negative portrayals of China outside the country. The paper contrasts the aggressive strengthening of China’s image against the West on social media with more sober accounts of the same topics in China’s official media and in commercial news outlets. The contribution of the paper is to document an emerging online anti-Westernism that is playing an increasing role in the changing geopolitical landscape.

Filial Affection as Political Failing: The Children of Rural Class Enemies under the Maoist Emotional Regime

Scholars have shown that the Chinese Communist Party under Mao Zedong was highly attuned to the role of emotions in human thought and action, and developed sophisticated techniques to channel them toward its political aims. How did individuals experience the system of normative emotions that developed from these political projects? This article addresses this question from the perspective of one particular group, those whose families were classified as “landlords” or “rich peasants.” It shows that those from such backgrounds were expected to renounce any filial emotion and to develop hostility toward their parents, an expectation that put most of them in a situation of acute emotional conflict. The article goes on to explore the ways in which people responded to this conflict, concluding that for the majority the conflict could be temporarily avoided but could not be resolved. It further argues that the larger-scale assault on the parent–child bond that took place during Cultural Revolution, which was widely denounced in post-Mao discourse, is best understood not merely as an extreme manifestation of the party’s anti-traditionalism, but as the broadening of practices that had developed primarily in connection with rural class enemies.

Forced Organ Harvesting

Forced Organ Harvesting

Exploring Red Education Communication in a Contrasting Perspective by Retracing the Long March as an Example

Patriotism is the deep emotion for the motherland and people accumulated by the Chinese nation for thousands of years, and is the spiritual core of the Chinese nation. Standing at the new historical starting point, the patriotism education of youth should grasp the essence of patriotism scientifically with the broad vision of historical materialism closely following the characteristics of the times. The spirit of the Long March is an important part of the spiritual genealogy of the Chinese Communists, which contains a deep patriotic spirit and is a valuable spiritual treasure of our Party. This study attempts to conduct an exploratory analysis of red education dissemination methods in a contrasting perspective. The study takes retracing the Long March Road as an example and combines various survey methods to study red education dissemination methods in the new era. The team visited the red nodes in the field and revisited the revolutionary years to achieve the purpose of "promoting the main theme in a way that is appealing to young people". The team has accomplished the innovation of patriotic education paths from "consolidation" to "enlightenment" - to continue the red cultural bloodline.