Chinese Party-state Research Articles

China's new historical statecraft: reviving the Second World War for national rejuvenation

Abstract There is a common perception that the Chinese state promotes fabricated accounts of the Second World War and the Communist Party's role in that conflict. Despite a growing scholarly interest in the history and collective memory of China's war experience, this perception has rarely been scrutinized, and the field has been slow to recognize recent shifts in China's memoryscape. This study draws on the concept of historical statecraft to compare official accounts with the historical record and explore how the Chinese party-state uses war memory for political purposes. It finds that its desire for national unity and international recognition have led Beijing to espouse a narrative of the Second World War that, despite significant gaps, is more representative and historically accurate than ever before. Simultaneously, the analysis shows that the Chinese leadership, at what it sees as a high-stakes juncture in China's nation-building project, increasingly monopolizes and mobilizes the memory of the war for the purposes of self-legitimation, control and strategic posturing. Although there are signs of China normalizing and globalizing its history, its official war memory reinforces an inwardly-directed form of Chinese nationalism. Analysts should take Chinese war memory seriously and study the implications of Beijing's new historical statecraft.

中華人民共和國 初期 攤販 管理 연구: 上海市 사례를 중심으로

The article examines how party-state governed street vendors in 1950’s Shanghai. Street vendor[tanfan], usually refers to independent merchants on streets and neighborhoods, was one of the huge unorganized and uncontrolled group with a long history. In Republican period, Shanghai Police had tried to keep a lid on street vendors but it failed confronting with strong opposition among vendors and citizens. Previous studies on Shanghai street vendors pointed that close and inter dependent relationship between citizens and vendors was the primary reason of this failed governance. And it also attributed successive governance of street vendor after 1949 to the Shanghai party-state’s assault on this relationship by individualization and thorough control of citizens. However, other than connection with citizens, street vendors had several characteristics to challenge the regime and party-state of Shanghai targeted at these. Shanghai Municipal Government recommended cooperative of street vendors in the context of denying small private economy and pursuing convenience of management. Although cooperative hurts street vendor’s interests, street vendors surrendered and be integrated. To overcome vendor’s mobility and disgregation, government organized them as street vendors committee[tanfan weiyuanhui] based on their business place and government affairs. The most differentiated policy was “Education of Patriotism and Law Abiding” against street vendors. During the mass movement, party-state encouraged street vendors to accuse each other’s illegal acts. And it not only insulted disloyal street vendors but also forgave and promoted surrenderer in public. The procedure is usually taken against counter-revolutionaries, bad element, or corrupted cadres. It means that Chinese Communist Party regard street vendors as enemy of regime despite of petty scale of their business, which was almost no difference with laborer. This characterized the governance of street vendors by Chinese Party-state in 1950’s.

Chinese Influence through Technical Standardization Power

ABSTRACT Geo-economic rivalry is back on the international agenda, particularly in the field of high technology. Very often, technical standards are regarded as being a central arena of this competition. Surprisingly ignored is the question, how precisely technical standard-setting (such as Wi-Fi or 5G) empowers China. Based on the analysis of quantitative data, primary sources, and in-depth interviews, this article substantiates the widespread hypothesis that China’s growing footprint in technical standardization empowers the Chinese party-state. It introduces seven proxies to measure influence on standard-setting. Next, it explains how technical standards can be utilized by states to gain economic, legal, political, and discursive influence. Finally, it shows thatChina’s growing footprint in technical standardization is the result of party-state engagement, which provides leverage to China’s political leadership.

Global City Agency and Multilevel Governance in China

Abstract Over the past few decades, cities have become increasingly active in global climate governance. Although most research on city agency has focused on democratic (often Western) cities, the climate-related activities of Chinese cities in global city networks have also expanded, raising the question of whether cities from nondemocratic political systems can be international actors or whether they are merely extensions of their national governments. This article examines how the Chinese Party-state’s institutions and governing instruments shape cities’ global agency and how these structures impact the work of various city networks operating in China. To this end, it analyzes policy reports, documents, and original interview data collected from city network representatives. The findings demonstrate that city networks in China walk a fine line between their door-opening function for cities to global climate governance and their role as transmitters of the central government’s gatekeeping function, thereby sustaining the hierarchical control structures of the Chinese Party-state.

Turning the Party State Inside Out: CCP Intra-party Regulations as a Theoretical Challenge

Abstract Scholarship on the Chinese party state commonly treats the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a black box: the Party acts in the world, using the law as its tool to achieve its political goals. The study of intra-party regulations turns this anthropomorphic image inside out, requiring scholars to regard the very notion of the Party and rule-based governance as ideologically and theoretically contentious matters. This article maps out—and criticizes—prominent approaches to the study of intra-party regulations and rule-based governance within the CCP. It is certainly possible to explain CCP intra-party regulations through external social theoretical perspectives, such as Ernst Fraenkel’s dual state model. However, such perspectives do not necessarily help one understand the CCP leaders’ and ideologues’ idiosyncratic approach to rule-based governance. Fraenkel’s dual state model, in particular, fails to fully describe the role of rule-based governance in the CCP’s governance project.

A Hundred Years of Entanglement: The Chinese Party-State and Ethnic Minorities

The consciousness of non-Han nationalities in modern China evolved around a deep antipathy to the Qing, assimilationist ideas, and pretentious multi-ethnicism. The concepts of equality among nationalities and right to self-determination entered into the discourse of nation- and state-building in China under the influence of Lenin’s revolutionary ideals and Stalin’s views on ‘the national question’. The Communist Party of China (CPC) has struggled to reconcile these concepts with its nationalist agenda since its inception in 1921. The CPC later innovated ethno-regional autonomy for minorities and developed corresponding institutions. This article argues that the Party’s three main agendas of national unification and interethnic unity, developmental goals, and majoritarian nationalism have all complicated its ties with ethnic minorities, and evaluates how the present leadership of the 100-year-old Party has been managing the relationship.

Let Confucianism and Islam work together: bargaining for a distinct Muslim identity in local propaganda literature

ABSTRACT In recent years, propaganda authorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China have orchestrated the production of posters, banners, books, news reports, and literary magazines calling for the Sinicisation of Islam. What role is played by local Hui (Chinese Muslim) writers in the production of this propaganda? This article is based on a close reading of propaganda literature from a local county between 2010 and 2017. I show that Hui writers bargain for the preservation Hui ideological and cultural particularities. While contributing to the propaganda apparatus, they bargain to find a balance between the national call for the Sinicisation of religion and their own goal of the preservation of a Hui identity distinct from Han-Chinese culture. They argue that Sinicisation in the sense of value integration benefits the propaganda goals of the Chinese Party-State in a way that is not possible with Sinicisation in the sense of cultural and ideological assimilation.

China’s Overseas NGO Law and the Future of International Civil Society

ABSTRACT China’s law to control international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) has sent shockwaves through international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), civil society and expert communities as the epitome of a worldwide trend of closing civic spaces. Since the Overseas NGO Management Law was enacted in January 2017, its implementation has seen mixed effects and diverging patterns of adaptation among Chinese party-state actors at the central and local levels and among domestic NGOs and INGOs. To capture the formal and informal dynamics underlying their mutual interactions in the longer term, this article employs a theory of institutional change inspired by Elinor Ostrom’s distinction between rules-in-form versus rules-in-use and identifies four scenarios for international civil society in China – “no change,” “restraining,” “recalibrating” and “reorienting.” Based on interviews, participant observation and Chinese policy documents and secondary literature, the respective driving forces, plausibility, likelihood and longer-term implications of each scenario are assessed. It is found that INGOs’ activities are increasingly affected by the international ambitions of the Chinese party-state, which enmeshes both domestic NGOs and INGOs as agents in its diplomatic efforts to redefine civil society participation on a global scale.

Transnational State-Corporate Symbiosis of Public Security: China’s Exports of Surveillance Technologies

Over the last two decades, the emerging Chinese Party-state has used commercial ties with North American and European providers of surveillance technologies to grow national prowess of public security, fostering a transnational state-corporate symbiosis. The exports of surveillance technologies from the Global North to China started in the late 1970s, and now Chinese technology companies are competing with and replacing those suppliers in the globalized neoliberal market. This research explores the two-way dynamic of China’s state and private surveillance capacity underscored by international companies’ profit-seeking behaviors and domestic technological and economic growth. Four case studies of companies from Canada, China, and the US are used to highlight the changing dynamics in the global circulation of surveillance technologies. Particular attention is paid to the cyclical nature of such technologies through which unresolved issues of global governance continue to emerge and, accordingly, support the growth of technology-powered authoritarianism worldwide.

Australian debate of the China question: the COVID-19 case

ABSTRACT Debate within Australia regarding the bilateral relationship with China is complex, contentious and often lacks clarity. Informed by basic international relations theory, we identify two dividing lines within this debate. First, whether understanding China’s behaviour is most effectively done through a unitary actor framework, or whether it is essential to look inside the ‘black box’ of the Chinese party-state. Second, whether one is more concerned about the ‘Thucydides trap’ or ‘Munich’—that is, are the consequences of an overreaction or an underreaction more concerning when interpreting China’s intentions and responding to perceived threats. These dividing lines generate four ideal-type policy viewpoints that we label Balancers, Hedgers, Engagers and Reformers, and apply in the Australian context. We then overlay our framework onto the public debate in Australia, selecting a specific bounded case study: commentary and analysis concerning China’s behaviour throughout the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, in particular responding to Australia’s call for an international inquiry. Our objective is to progress an often circular debate by offering an accessible frame that clarifies and synthesises fundamental disagreements.

The Political Economy of Xi Jinping’s Political Rollback

When Xi Jinping had just come to power in 2012, the world expected that he would continue the development trajectory of economic liberalization and political institutionalization set in motion by Deng Xiaoping. However, when the National People’s Congress abolished the presidential term limit in the Chinese Constitution in March of 2018, it suddenly became clear that Xi had chosen to “roll back” from Deng’s policy line in nearly every aspect of the Chinese Party-state system. How does one explain Xi’s sudden departure from Deng’s policy line? In comparison with the resurgence of other authoritarian regimes of the 1960s and 1970s in Latin America and East Asia, this paper argues that the cause of Xi’s political rollback lies in the exhaustion of the previous development model. More specifically, the exhaustion of export-led growth in the mid-2000s had made the existing distributive coalition unsustainable. The power struggle within the political coalition therefore intensified and finally led to Xi’s monopoly over political power. The argument of this paper will proceed through four parts. It will begin with a literature review of comparative authoritarianism with a particular focus on the impact of a development crisis on the survival of political coalitions. It is followed by an analysis of the contributions of China’s export-led growth to the sustainability of the political coalition during the eras of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. Then, it will explain how the exhaustion of export-led growth led to a power struggle within the political coalition and how through a re-orientation of the development model, Xi has gradually concentrated power into his own hands. Finally, it will discuss the theoretical implications of China’s case.

Securitization, surveillance and ‘de-extremization’ in Xinjiang

Abstract Previous explanations on China's counterterrorism strategy have highlighted the results of China's strategy of repression in Xinjiang, the historical antecedents and institutional foundations of its counterterrorism policies, as well as international and domestic sources of China's counterterrorism strategy. While acknowledging the importance of all these dimensions, this article draws attention to a largely neglected feature of China's counterterrorism strategy: the Chinese party-state's social engineering of Xinjiang. Building on Maoist-era practices such as the mass line and the ‘friend vs. enemy’ binary, the Communist party under Xi Jinping has integrated surveillance technologies as part of its strategy of preventive counterterrorism and ‘de-extremization’. This article argues that the Chinese party-state's embrace of modern technologies, a weak liberal tradition in China, Xi Jinping's rise to power in late 2012, and the appointment of Chen Quanguo as Xinjiang's party-secretary in 2016, provides the socio-political background for the intensification of securitization, surveillance and introduction of ‘re-education and training centres’ in Xinjiang. Surveillance technologies now complement collective, face-to-face methods of surveillance and Maoist-era techniques of mass mobilization, enabling the Chinese party-state to govern and manage the biopolitical spaces of Uyghurs with greater intensity, according to the state's precise norms. The legalization and institutionalization of ‘de-extremization’ has also led to the shift from mass ‘de-extremization’ propaganda to ‘drip-irrigation’ ideological and political re-education of individuals deemed at risk of extremism. The result is an increased capacity by the Chinese party-state to surveil and control the region, and to more effectively negate the possibility of individual resistance.

UN celebrity diplomacy in China: activism, symbolism and national ambition online

Abstract This article examines Chinese celebrities' UN-affiliated Weibo activism in the context of China's increasing engagement in the United Nations, which coincides with a shrinking domestic public sphere under Xi Jinping's leadership. Our article sheds light on how Chinese celebrity diplomacy is balancing contradictory expectations by the UN, the Chinese party-state and the domestic public in China. In doing so, we offer an important conceptual update of the western-centric literature on ‘celebrity diplomacy’, which focuses mostly on celebrity politics instead of diplomacy and tends to neglect the digital sphere. Based on a combined qualitative and quantitative approach, we draw fresh conclusions from nine Chinese celebrities' communication on Weibo since 2013. Our research covers the years marking China's growing self-confidence and a more assertive Chinese diplomatic style in global affairs. Although accredited by the UN, on balance Chinese celebrities' activism has become more symbolic than real, and as a rule aligned with the Chinese leadership's domestic and international ambitions. At a time of greater Chinese global activism, we are sensitive to the policy implications of Chinese celebrities' engagement on the cusp of the political and diplomatic spheres.

Party, State, Civil Society and Covid-19 in China

Abstract In China, the story of Covid-19 and the relationship between government and civil society is not a sharp break from the past. China has long guided and controlled the development of civil society organizations, and that has not changed in the Covid era. Instead, the Covid era is a story of a continuation in restrictive policy, and responses to Covid have utilized those existing policies and regulatory framework rather than developing new policies for the Covid era. The Chinese story may thus somewhat different from others in this special issue. China is certainly not a story of, in the words of our issue editors, when “pluralist and social democratic visions fade.” The Chinese Party-state’s permission for the reemergence of some kinds of civil society organizations in China since the early 1980s has never been marked by pluralist and social democratic visions. Instead, it has been marked by Party and state control, and clear choices on what kinds of organizations to facilitate and which kinds to repress. That control-based framework has accelerated since the current administration came into office in 2012. Covid has neither upset that restrictive framework nor substantially altered it. Instead, the framework of differentiation and constraint employed by the Chinese state has adapted, in some ways, to the need to control Covid and to control public mobilization on it and against the Party-state. In this brief article we outline the framework of differentiation and constraint that the Chinese Party-state uses to control the Chinese nonprofit sector, and mention a few ways in which that framework has been used in the Covid era.

Domestic Contestation, International Backlash, and Authoritarian Resilience: How Did the Chinese Party-state Weather the COVID-19 Crisis?

ABSTRACT This article aims to provide a first-cut analysis of the causes of the initial COVID-19 outbreak as well as the subsequent political contestations in which the masses ended up rallying behind the party-state. While the Wuhan fiasco had everything to do with entrenched pathologies of the bureaucratic state, after Beijing took central command of the broader campaign its overriding priority was to contain the virus with a goal toward salvaging its legitimacy at home. To that end, Beijing unleashed its warrior diplomats to aggressively defend its handling of the pandemic, even to the detriment of its international image. Nevertheless, the strategy worked because the nationalist and populist backlash against the regime’s foreign and domestic critics helped turn the public opinion around in its favor.

Placing China’s land marketization: The state, market, and the changing geography of land use in Chinese cities

Existing theorization of the processes of urban transformation in different world regions has been based upon diverse interpretations of the interplay between the state and market forces. Studies of the growth and transformation of Chinese cities are characterized by continuing debates between those who insisted on the pivotal role played by the Chinese Party-state and others who envisioned urban China as moving decisively toward capitalism. This research examines the pattern and process of land marketization in urban China as a case to understand the interaction between the state and market forces in China’s ongoing urban transformation. Statistical analysis of the data for the Chinese cities at and above the prefectural level for the years of 2003–2017 has identified an uneven geography of land marketization effectively shaped by a localization of state-market interplay. A significant and positive correlation is found between the degree of land finance and extent of land marketization. The uneven geography of land marketization is significantly influenced by the legacy of the socialist planned economy as measured by the dominance of state-owned enterprises. However, the strength and direction of the correlation between the state and market are found to be contingent upon the level of urban economic growth. Spatial variation in land marketization is also shaped by the degree of openness, local state policies toward industrial vis-à-vis commercial and residential land supply, population density, and the size of the city. Findings of this research call for a theoretical reconsideration of the state-market relationship in urban transformation more attentive to local conditions.

Characterizing QAnon: Analysis of YouTube comments presents new conclusions about a popular conservative conspiracy

QAnon has become an important phenomenon in American politics due to both its relative popularity as well as its adoption/endorsement by political elites. However, this conspiracy theory/social movement has received sparse investigation in the social sciences. This gap is particularly noticeable in regards to the QAnon movement’s overall beliefs and perceptions of global affairs. This piece addresses these research gaps by using repeatable inductive computational social science methods to analyze a sample of comments from YouTube, a platform popular with QAnon followers. This investigation affirms previous observations regarding QAnon’s narratives connecting the U.S. government (particularly prominent Democrats) and alleged sexual violence against children, anti-semitism/fundamentalist Christian theology, and pro-Trump sentiments, and also reaveals several novel conclusions regarding QAnon. These novel observations include: [1] that the QAnon community sustains substantial discussion of international affairs, largely revolving around China, Russia and Israel (in order of prominence); [2] that discussion of China in QAnon comments received more “likes” than other international topics; and [3] that a nexus of conjectures tying former presidential candidate, Senator, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the Chinese party-state dominate these China-centric comments. Aside from these novel conclusions regarding QAnon, this paper also seeks to make a contribution to repeatable social science analysis of YouTube comments more generally.

The Rule of Law in the U.S.-China Tech War

U.S. policy is increasingly being influenced by suspicion of links between Chinese companies and the Chinese party-state and military. Competition over the technological future between the world’s two largest economies has produced a legal thicket of statutes, regulations, and executive orders in areas including foreign investment, data storage and privacy, and access to the U.S. capital markets. These regimes were created or bolstered due to legitimate concerns about the geo-economic impact of transactions that implicate control over advanced technology and data. Yet regulatory uncertainty engendered by the legal landscape has greatly complicated many aspects of the prosaic but fundamental work of producing innovative companies and technologies: cross-border investment and data flow, mergers and acquisitions, and talent recruitment. In this chapter, we approach the big policy issues in the U.S.-China tech war from the ground up, by exploring how the legal regimes recently developed in both countries to wage the tech war and operationalize technological decoupling affect cross-border deal making and domestic innovation. We fear that ironically, the rule of law necessary to maintain continued vibrancy in U.S. high-tech sectors is being compromised by some of the very actions ostensibly taken to protect these sectors from malign foreign influence. We conclude by offering some concrete policy suggestions to improve the transparency and effectiveness of national security and data protection regimes in the U.S. while advancing a second crucial objective – maintaining a regulatory environment conducive to technological innovation.

China’s Perspectives on Public International Law: Selective Adaptation of International Treaties and the Community of Common Destiny Concept

This study analyses two aspects of China’s perspectives on public international law: the implementation mechanism that gives legal effect to international treaties within the Chinese domestic legal system and the views of Chinese international law scholars on the important foreign policy concept of ‘the community of common destiny for mankind’. The author argues that the mode of domestic treaty implementation is aimed at flexibility to allow for the selective adaptation of contents of international law that promote the national interests of the Chinese party-State. How Chinese international law scholars flesh out the legal substance of the community of common destiny concept accords with findings that regard China’s norm-making activities as a dialectical process that emphasises both the normative status quo and changes to the international legal order. Intended changes of public international law appear to be regime type specific as they primarily attempt to legitimise and facilitate the perpetuation of the authoritarian system. I. Introduction

The Communist Party as Polity and the Chinese Party-State Constitutional Order

The Communist Party as Polity and the Chinese Party-State Constitutional Order