Chinese Political System Research Articles

Эволюция политического режима в Китайской Народной Республике в период председательства Си Цзиньпина

The purpose of the study is to examine the main elements of the modern Chinese political system as well as identify the indicators of a neo-authoritarian (hybrid) regime in the People’s Republic of China. The PRC’s political regime started to evolve in 2012 when Xi Jinping was elected as a Chairman of the Central Military Commission. It is typical for China to declare political pluralism in case of real domination of one party, i.e. the Communist Party of China. The PRC is characterized by the state-controlled political involvement of citizens through the National Peo-ple’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. The trend in the rise of authoritarianism had intensified since the 19th CPC National Congress (October 18-24, 2017) when Xi Jinping concentrated state, party, and military power in his hands. The anti-corruption campaign against flies and tigers became one of the methods of fight against opposition. The Chinese political system tends to blend traditional and charismatic types of legitimacy in the presence of rational and legal type. In this regard, traditionalism in ideology prevails over Marxism and economic pragmatism during the chairmanship of Xi Jinping. The paternalistic leader-ship is appropriate for the ideological concept of traditionalism followed by the current political elite of China. As a result, there is a shift from the colle-gial management principles to the paternalistic and personalistic authoritarian model.

The Political and Economic Consequences of Nationalist Protest in China: The 2012 Anti-Japanese Demonstrations

AbstractWhat are the consequences of nationalist unrest? This paper utilizes two original datasets, which cover 377 city-level anti-Japanese protests during the 2012 Senkaku/Diaoyu Island crisis and the careers of municipal leaders, to analyse the downstream effects of nationalist unrest at the subnational level. We find both political and economic consequences of China's 2012 protest demonstrations against Japan. Specifically, top Party leaders in cities that saw relatively spontaneous, early protests were less likely to be promoted to higher office, a finding that is consistent with the widely held but rarely tested expectation that social instability is punished in the Chinese Communist Party's cadre evaluation system. We also see a negative effect of nationalist protest on foreign direct investment (FDI) growth at the city level. However, the lower promotion rates associated with relatively spontaneous protests appear to arise through political rather than economic channels. By taking into account data on social unrest in addition to economic performance, these results add to existing evidence that systematic evaluation of leaders’ performance plays a major role in the Chinese political system. These findings also illuminate the dilemma that local leaders face in managing popular nationalism amid shifting national priorities.

The emergence of guiding cases in China

Chinese legal reform is dotted with episodes of progress and stagnation. While significant steps have been taken to professionalize, specialize, and autotomize the judicial apparatus, populist forces have also informed the trajectory of reform. Guiding cases have ignited tremendous scholarly discourses about the importance of the tool, and how it can help ameliorate the legal system. Some scholars “cite their potential to fill statutory lacunae, unify legal standards, improve judicial efficiency, and limit judicial discretion.” Others argue that the Chinese political and legal system are ill-prepared (or incompatible) to adopt the guiding cases paradigm. This article investigates the development of guiding cases and attempts to shed light on their function and potential impact on the political and legal landscapes. We maintain that the current role of guiding cases in the overall system is still ambiguous and that the rise of guiding cases has had marked progress, but its development in the political and legal milieus remain to be discerned.

Traditional Resources, Internet Resources, and Youth Online Political Participation: The Resource Theory Revisited in the Chinese Context

This study tests whether resource theory can be used to examine the effects of traditional resources and Internet-specific resources on youth online political participation using a representative sample of Chinese college students studying in Shanghai in 2012. The authors find that traditional resources in the form of civic skills and family income are negatively associated with online participation while a distinct set of Internet-specific resources are significantly and positively associated with different modes of youth online political participation depending on their unique cost structures. Mobile phone Internet access and advanced Internet skills are crucial for youth online expressive political participation, advanced Internet skills, mobile phone and home Internet access, and perceived Internet freedom are required for youth online collective action participation. We contribute to the literature by demonstrating that the Chinese political system moderates the cost structures for various types of political behaviors.

Control Ability: Core Capability of Chinese Disaster Management Cooperation System

Government capacity implies the quality of being capable, and are very important for executing the political will, especially in the extremely situation, such as in crisis and emergency, and among the capabilities, core capability determines the success or not of the disaster relief and reduction. Core capability mostly depends on the emergency management system is an integrated model or segregated model. The emergency management systems of Korea and US are integrated one and China’s system is segregated one. Based on the analysis of Chinese government disaster reduction system, this study compared the China’s Eastern Star cruise ship wreck accident and Korea’s Sewol sank accident, which both killed hundreds of people, we can see that China’s disaster reduction was much more efficient and effective than Korea did. The main reason is China has a much stronger control ability than Korean government, which make a good cooperation among agencies at the state level, between central government and local government, and among agencies at local level. Through the study, we can see that the Chinese political system gives the government a very strong control ability, that is the core competitiveness of Chinese disaster management cooperation system. That is to say that successful disaster management needs successful cooperation among government agencies, cooperation needs the control ability, the control ability needs the political system to give guarantee.

The art of political ambiguity: top–down intergovernmental information asymmetry in China

China, similar to other countries with multi-level government structure, suffers serious information asymmetry between different levels of governments. Existing studies mostly focus on how the secret information possessed by lower-level governments undermines effective control by upper-level governments. However, not enough attention has been paid to the fact that higher authorities in China often intentionally issue ambivalent orders and withhold crucial information about policy goals and means from their subordinates. In face of such top–down information asymmetry, lower-level governments have to constantly speculate the true intentions of their superiors when implementing directives from above. This study tries to make sense of the seemingly counterproductive political ambiguity by analyzing cases of intergovernmental communication and policy implementation in the campaign of New Socialist Countryside Construction. We argue that higher authorities in China may strategically deploy political ambiguity to enable flexible policy implementation, encourage policy innovation, orient local efforts among multiple policy goals, and reduce accountability for policy failures. Essentially, political ambiguity enhances the adaptability and resilience of the Chinese political system in governing the vastly diverse and rapidly developing country of China.

China Is Corrupt, but There Is More to the Story

Minxin Pei's China's Crony Capitalism: The Dynamics of Regime Decay is a major contribution, likely to significantly influence discussions about China and its future. He argues that China's political economy is characterized by crony capitalism, manifest in collusion between political and business elites, leading to the fundamental decay of China's Leninist system in its late stages. Moreover, the legacy of crony capitalism bodes poorly for a post-Leninist democratic regime in China.There is much in this work with which I agree. Yet I have some major areas of disagreement as well. Pei uses a principal-agent framework to make his argument. In this framework, he sees lower-level officials (agents) unresponsive to the norms and incentives established by the upper levels of the political system (the principals). The agents use their ability to control and distort information as well as the limited time and resources the principals have to monitor their subordinates to evade central directives and expectations. It is certainly clear from the cases that Pei uses as evidence that there is a great deal of corruption in the Chinese political system. But does this mean that the principals are helpless or that local officials are unresponsive to the incentives established by the center? Corruption may be endemic, but is it the whole story or even the most important part of the story?A significant amount of research has been undertaken suggesting that at least officials who want to rise to higher positions are responsive to upper-level incentives emphasizing economic growth targets, as well social stability and (perhaps until very recently) population control. While corruption has been a characteristic of party-state rule, so too has growth. Moreover, some of the activities that Pei sees as endemic corruption may also be critical to growth. As one study argued, higher land sales in one year correlate with higher transportation infrastructure spending in following years, which are correlated with higher growth. Higher transportation infrastructure spending is also correlated with higher land prices in subsequent years.1 The allocation of land, insider trading, and takings of land from rural communities may all be deeply corrupt activities and an inefficient allocation of scarce resources. But it is not clear that this is as predatory and rapacious as Pei suggests, nor is it clear that the results are not in keeping with overall central (and regime) goals.The principal-agent framework originates from writings in institutional economics and, as with many economic models, assumes that actors are maximizing their preferences or utilities. In this book, it appears that Pei believes that corrupt actors in the Chinese system are maximizing their income and/or power. But as I have suggested above, one might be both corrupt and advancing broader goals. Consider several cases. Mu Suixin was mayor of Shenyang before he was toppled in 2001, having been implicated in a bribery ring exercised by a local criminal element (p. 246). But Mu was also seen as an up-and-comer. He was featured on a PBS documentary, China in the Red, and he gave extensive access to the camera crew. He was portrayed as decisive, working hard to cope with Shenyang's unemployment problems, at least until his arrest (also covered in the documentary). Presumably, he received approval from the Liaoning provincial party committee to have his work so publicly covered. Indeed, PBS access to Mu may have been approved by the party center. He was corrupt, but he also was seen as trying to meet popular demands and respond to central directives.In a similar vein, we might view the situation of Bo Xilai, the former party secretary of Chongqing Municipality who was tried and convicted for corruption (and whose wife was convicted in the murder of a British citizen). Bo also appears to have challenged the leadership arrangement made for the 18th Party Congress, culminating in Xi Jinping's ascendency. …

Author’s Response: A Corruption Market More Sophisticated Than You Think

The criticisms and comments of the three distinguished participants in this roundtable cover a wide range of issues, and it is impossible to address all of them here. In the space below, I respond to three main concerns about China's Crony Capitalism: The Dynamics of Regime Decay raised in their reviews: (1) theoretical framework and arguments, (2) empirical evidence and interpretation, and (3) implications of the findings.Theoretical Framework and ArgumentsThe book's main theoretical contribution is to offer an institutional explanation for the emergence of a particular type of corruption-collusive corruption perpetuated mainly to enable political and business elites to loot nominally state-owned assets at steep discounts or no cost. It traces the rise of this type of looting to a series of changes in China's property rights regime in the post-Tiananmen era that significantly decentralized control rights without clarifying ownership rights. The main theoretical argument itself is straightforward. In the context of other significant decentralizing institutional changes that have granted local-level officials enormous discretion (most critically power over personnel appointments), the combination of decentralized control rights and unclear ownership rights (or, strictly speaking, the absence of real owners) creates an ideal environment for political and business elites to collude and loot valuable assets such as land, mining resources, and assets in state-owned enterprises (SOE). Collusion is necessitated by both the decentralization of control rights (with multiple officials empowered with approval authority) and unclear ownership (which attracts multiple claimants). The same logic and institutional conditions also apply to the widespread collusive corruption in infrastructure investments.This theoretical framework offers an original explanation for the rise of collusive looting in the post-Tiananmen era. It does not, however, claim to explain all forms of corruption, as Yan Sun implies. The type of corruption she identifies is best characterized as garden-variety theft or petty corruption, not looting. So the analytical framework centered on property rights does not explain garden-variety theft. But how do we account for the rise of collusion in corrupt activities that do not involve the looting of state-owned assets? In the book, there are three sets of cases where property rights are not directly involved: the purchase and sale of public office, collusion between law enforcement and organized crime (although in at least 20% of the cases crime bosses gained undervalued land and mines with the help of local officials), and collusive corruption in courts and regulatory agencies. It is instructive to note that in these cases the median corruption income of the chief official perpetrator ranges between 510,000 and 760,000 yuan-a fraction of the median corruption income of the chief official perpetrator colluding with businessmen (9.5 million yuan) and the median corruption income of the chief perpetrator of collusive corruption in SOEs (6.4 million yuan) (pp. 120 and 155). The huge disparity in corruption income confirms the importance of property: officials engaged in garden-variety theft get paid for services, whereas those engaged in collusive looting are rewarded much more handsomely for obtaining undervalued or costless public assets.The purchase and sale of public office constitute a critical linkage in the formation of collusive networks in the Chinese political system. Sun does not believe that China's Crony Capitalism provides evidence showing that party chiefs sold offices to subordinates explicitly to facilitate their corrupt activities (including doling out undervalued state-owned assets to their business cronies). This is not true. Of course, due to the limited information revealed in the official media and court documents, it is impossible to build an overwhelming case demonstrating this connection. …

The Political Economy of Organisational Violence in Chinese Industry

“Organisational violence” involves wilful, illegal business behaviour that has the potential to harm workers, consumers, or the environment. We use a combined perspective from the fields of political economy and criminology to examine the incongruously high level of organisational violence among Chinese firms that exists despite robust efforts by the government to put forth regulatory laws that prohibit it. As the explanation for this incongruity, we assert two conditions that synergistically interact in a bidirectional relationship: 1) the complex legal structural barriers to effective enforcement against organisational violence caused by a politically biased and administratively fragmented Chinese political system, and 2) a socially disorganised business environment that does not recursively message the wrongfulness of organisational violence. The analysis rejects not only financial gain as a relevant factor in the commission of organisational violence but also other current perspectives on the causes of organisational violence in China.

The Chinese ‘Developmental State 3.0’ and the resilience of authoritarianism

Political scientists frequently argue that authoritarian systems are per se economically inefficient, non-innovative, and without legitimacy. China’s economic success and relative stability in recent decades have shown, however, that such postulates are far too simplistic. Accordingly, the question is why China is managing to develop so smoothly and how its stability and legitimacy are to be explained. This article takes up the concept of the ‘developmental state’ in order to better explain and localize the function and behavior of the Chinese state. It argues that developmental states exhibit specific features that help elucidate and explain the ‘resilience’ of the Chinese political system.

The Rules and Norms of Leadership Succession in China: From Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping and Beyond

Under Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese Communist Party started to institutionalize leadership succession in the 1980s. Peaceful and orderly succession of the top political offices, however, only started to take shape in the early 1990s. We identify three sets of rules and norms formed since then to govern elite replacement and power succession. These concern top leaders’ exit from power, selection of successors, and the transition of power between outgoing and incoming leaders. We trace the evolving process in which these rules were made and accepted by the Party elite between 1992 and 2012. Incidents, however, also showed the malleability of some of these rules and the potential rise of ambitious rule challengers. Into Xi Jinping’s era, uncertainty still threatens the revision or abandonment of some of these rules, and continuous attention is needed in order to understand the likely trajectories of the Chinese political system.

How are Foreign Policy Decisions Made in China?

AbstractThe growing number of actors involved in China's international activities has led to fractured authority in foreign policy decision‐making. Actors vie for the attention of senior officials to promote their interests on any specific issue. As a result, decision making is often a slow process; there are multiple channels of information, and actors appeal to public opinion to support their claims. Since 2012, Xi Jinping has taken charge of all foreign policy related decision‐making bodies in what appears to be an attempt to improve coordination of interest groups. A slight shift to a more personified foreign policy than during the Hu or Jiang eras has also taken place. In this paper, we describe how foreign policy decisions should be made in China according to formal rules; next, we take into account the reality of how the Chinese political system deals with China's evolving international role. We conclude by assessing the risks of fragmentation, on the one hand, and Xi's efforts to recentralise foreign policy, on the other hand.

Gallagher, Kelly Sims. 2014. The Globalization of Clean Energy Technology: Lessons from China. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

When it comes to tackling climate change, no other country than the United States garners as much attention as China. A rapid increase in energy consumption in China has coincided with growing economic prosperity. China is not only the world’s largest consumer of energy but also its largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions.Kelly Sims Gallagher’s book seeks to debunk this image of China as an environmental laggard. She has written an upbeat and optimistic book about the steps China has taken to build a more sustainable economy by moving away from a resource-intensive economy to a more diversified one. Through the globalization of cleaner energy technologies—defined as “more efficient, renewable, and low-carbon energy technologies” (p. 15)—China is transforming its energy sector, developing new industries, and reducing its carbon intensity.Gallagher offers a compelling argument about the mechanisms through which China has become a world leader in the development and deployment of cleaner energy technologies. She puts forth a theory about the barriers and incentives that explain the international transfer of cleaner energy technologies, highlighting the importance of domestic government policy, intellectual property, and available financing. At times the argument is repetitive, owing to the book’s organization around three hypotheses concerning barriers to the international transfer of technology. However, the main crux of the book comes through clearly: “There are no insurmountable barriers to the global diffusion of cleaner energy technologies” (p. 176). Gallagher demonstrates the ease of accessing capital in China to support cleaner energy industries; while the infringement of clean energy intellectual property is a concern, it is not a serious impediment. In fact, she finds that since the late 2000s, the Chinese government has been bolstering its intellectual property regime. Most importantly, China has successfully developed and deployed cleaner energy technologies mainly because of Chinese government incentives for creating market demand, especially through market formation policies.The book’s strength rests with its rich and well-researched cases. Importantly, Gallagher demonstrates through case studies that technology transfers no longer flow only North to South (whereby an advanced industrialized country transfers equipment to a developing country) but also North to South to North, South to South, and South to North. Gallagher furthermore shows her grasp of the development and deployment of cleaner energy technologies in the way she analyzes the growth of four industries: gas turbines, advanced batteries for vehicles, solar photovoltaics, and coal gasification. Woven throughout the cases are excerpts from interviews she carried out in China, Germany, and the United States that illuminate how foreign firms transferred technology to Chinese firms, which in turn acquired and developed cleaner energy technologies and then exported them. Chapter 7 details conditions that helped facilitate global diffusion of cleaner energy technologies: internationalization of university education; international collaboration among firms, universities, and research institutes; the increased normalcy of migration; the emergence of a global energy technology innovation system; the proliferation of national market-formation policies; trade liberalization and new international institutions; and China’s willingness to provide financing. For example, the internationalization of university education proved vital for growth of the Chinese solar industry, by allowing Chinese students to study abroad and return home, bringing with them improved technological know-how and ties to international networks.Will other countries reap the gains that China has made in clean energy technology innovation? Gallagher does not seem to think so. She stresses that the “China experience is unique and cannot be easily replicated,” owing to the “sheer size of the Chinese economy” and the Chinese political system’s use of long-term planning (p. 154).Nonetheless, Gallagher draws upon the Chinese situation to argue that bigger may be better in the cleaner energy domain. In contrast to traditional wisdom, she writes, “it is not at all clear that smaller, individualized technologies are better for developing countries” (p. 20). Rather, she argues that a “[b]igger market scale is critically important for the global diffusion of cleaner energy technologies” (p. 20). It remains unclear, however, whether the scaling up of cleaner energy technologies also generates negative environmental impacts.The Chinese government has demonstrated a commitment to reducing dependence on energy-intensive industries and introducing more efficient ones by specifying targets in its five-year plans and promulgating new laws, standards, and rules. However, Gallagher’s book focuses on businesses and national policies rather than delving more deeply into implementation at the local level. Further research could track the extent to which firms embrace a greener approach throughout their entire product life cycle.The Globalization of Clean Energy Technology will surely be a primary text for anyone interested in learning about China’s energy sector and business innovation in China. The book captures the dualities and complexities of Chinese energy economy—both highly polluting and at the forefront of green technology.

Non-Governmental Organisations’ Policy Advocacy in China: Resources, Government Intention and Network

When can non-governmental organisations (NGOs) affect government policies in a strong authoritarian Party-state like China? What is the status quo of state-society relations in China in the new century after decades of reform? Based on the literature of interest groups, state-society relations and civil society, this article builds and tests three hypotheses: the government-guided participation, NGO resource and vertical network. These hypotheses are tested through a quantitative study based on survey data. Findings have shown that the government-guided participation hypothesis is well-supported empirically, while the other two hypotheses have limited corroborating evidence. The Chinese political system is therefore still very much authoritarian and closed after more than two decades of reform and an “associational revolution”. It is also likely to follow a corporatist model instead of a pluralist model of state-society relations.

The politics of performance measurement in China

Performance measurement (PM) has been widely used in China's public sector to enhance performance and ensure accountability. Like in other countries, PM in China is an arena of political management and manipulation by which political priorities are articulated and political loyalty and responsiveness are sought. This paper develops a regime-centered analytical framework to understand the political nature of China's PM. It identifies major political structures that influence the adoption and functioning of PM in China, including the unified political and administrative system, the Chinese developmental state and its performance legitimacy strategy, the unitary but decentralized intergovernmental systems, and the bureaucratic culture and informal rules. Despite their constraining effects, these structural attributes of the Chinese political system fundamentally account for the rise and popularity of PM in China.

Chinese Patron-Clientelism for the Twenty-First Century: The Rise of Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang

Patron-clientelism is the central dynamic propelling leadership change in China, and this model of personal association opened a path for China’s current top leaders. Patron-clientelism bolsters the key features of the Chinese political system: Leninist political organization, intra-party divisions, conflictual decision-making processes, and the vital roles played by senior figures. Patron-clientelism is characterized by both vertical and horizontal dimensions, and it is accompanied by endemic personalism, factionalism, corruption, and nepotism. Clientelistic ties have shaped all leadership transitions since the Maoist period, and they were most evident in the falls of leaders Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang in the 1980s. Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang are the latest beneficiaries of the patron-clientelistic system. Xi was propelled by his “princeling” background and his association with the Shanghai faction of former top leader Jiang Zemin. Li is the latest scion of the Communist Youth League faction that produced Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao. The recent fall of Bo Xilai illustrates some of the pitfalls of factional and “princeling” leadership.

Hydropolitics and Inter-Jurisdictional Relationships in China: The Pursuit of Localized Preferences in a Centralized System

AbstractInter-jurisdictional water resource issues constitute a growing political and economic challenge in China. This article examines three such cases of hydropolitics, namely large dam construction, water resource allocation, and downstream water pollution, through the lens of central–local relations. It argues that the hydropolitics in China are characterized by the pursuit of localized preferences within the constraints imposed by a centralized political system. In each case, the primary actors are sub-national administrative units, who adopt various competitive strategies to pursue their own localized interests at the expense of neighbouring jurisdictions. This article argues that although vertical control mechanisms in the Chinese system effectively limit central–local preference divergence, they do little to contain horizontal conflicts between sub-national administrative units. The paucity of formal inter-jurisdictional dispute resolution mechanisms is a major barrier to meeting water resource challenges, and inter-jurisdictional collective action problems are likely to pose growing difficulties for the Chinese political system.

Incidental Emotions, Provisional Priming, and Political Trust: Survey Experiments on the Robustness of Political Trust among Chinese College Freshmen

This paper examines the robustness of Chinese college freshmen’s self-reported trust in their political incumbents and institutions, as well as their support to the Chinese political system, under different experimental conditions. More specifically, this paper scrutinizes the possible “carryover effects” (driven by incidental emotions like happiness and anger) and “provisional priming effects” (driven by provisionally manipulated perceptions of the salience of corruption and political reforms) in their self-reported political trust using randomized experiments embedded in a probability sampling survey of a Chinese national university’s freshmen. Experimental data show little support for “carryover effects” and limited support for “provisional priming effects.” Moreover, the effectiveness of provisional priming is highly contingent upon (1) the population distribution features of the political attitude under examination and (2) related attitude extremity of each respondent. Overall, at least among the Chinese college freshmen under examination, self-reported political trust is quite robust against the influence of incidental emotions and provisional priming that are not integral to political dynamics under examination.

The Political Economy of Corporate Finance: Evidence from Re-nationalizationn in China

We investigate the power structure of the Chinese political system and its implications on corporate sectors. We document large-scale ‘re-nationalization’—local government re-possessing controlling ownership stakes in previously privatized firms during the period 1999-2007. Firms located in provinces with newly appointed, top-ranked Communist Party leaders who are not affiliated with any of the dominant political factions are more likely to be re-nationalized. With a number of instrument variables including the political status of the top-ranked provincial Party leader, we find that re-nationalization leads to lower profitability and labor productivity. While renationalization temporarily lowers the unemployment rate in the region, it does not appear to have any long-term economic benefits.

Health system reform and political participation on the Chinese Internet

Authoritarian regimes, such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), seek to bolster legitimacy by facilitating communications between citizens and government officials. This article investigates the operation of online consultation, a process through which citizens offer feedback on draft laws and regulations. The article specifically examines the importance of demographic characteristics and subjective motivations in the expression of citizen sentiments in response to a proposed revision to China’s health system. By bringing together analysis of the content of citizen sentiment with a survey of participants, the article illuminates the determinants of the tone and substance of citizen feedback in health system reform. The primary finding is that participants who were internally efficacious and democratically oriented were, relative to respondents not possessing such traits, positive in tone and highly substantive in the submission of their comments concerning health system reform. This finding indicates that the health system reform commenting process offered citizens the opportunity to gain exposure to democratic principles and the process of articulating interests. More broadly, the analysis suggests the promise of online consultation in promoting citizen satisfaction with public policies, the legitimacy of the CCP, and, ultimately, stability in the Chinese political system.