The impact of reform on the party and ideology in China

In the People's Republic of China (PRC), the monolithic organization of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its unchallenged official ideology, Mao Zedong Thought, used to be the two mighty pillars sustaining Communist rule during Mao's era. Since the late 1970s, however, these two pillars have been shattered by a series of post‐Mao economic and political reforms under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping. As the result of a drastic decline in the standing of the party leadership and its official ideology, the ruling methods and foundation of the current regime have also changed. How did the reforms significantly affect the party and the official ideology? How did the changes in the roles of the party and ideology, in turn, redefine the nature and ruling methods of the current Communist regime? What do these changes imply for the future of this regime and the course of ongoing political and economic modernization? These questions, which are crucial for our understanding of the nature of sociopolitical transition in China, will be addressed in this article.     

China after Deng: Some perspectives∗

Deng Xiaoping's succession arrangement is different from the typical practice of the supreme leader of a dictatorship. Instead of occupying the highest leadership position himself until his death, Deng has let his “successor” assume office as the supreme leader while he is still alive and influential. Such an arrangement will help avoid a succession crisis and political upheavals upon Deng's death. In addition, the current market‐oriented economic reforms are very unlikely to be reversed in post‐Deng's China because of four factors: (1) public support of the reforms; (2) the vested interest of the “prince party” in the reforms; (3) the new leadership's commitment to the reforms; and (4) the constitutionalization of the reforms. However, there are three major sources of social unrest, which may lead to some political turbulence in the post‐Deng period. These sources are the “June 4th Incident” of 1989, public demand for an end of corruption and for political liberalization, and some socio‐economic problems brought about by the on‐going economic reforms. Although there will be periodical events of socio‐political turbulence, they are unlikely to drag China into a long period of instability or lead to a split of the nation.     

Socialism and tradition: The formation and development of modern Chinese political culture

This paper analyzes the relationship between Chinese traditional culture and the official ideologies. The author argues that the “New Culture” Movement was a movement of ideological displacement. The acceptance of Marxism‐Leninism by China's new intellectuals was closely related to the structure of the traditional culture. The foundation of both Mao Zedong Thought and the Three Principles of the People is a combination of the deep structure of the traditional culture and reactive values. This is why the structure of contemporary Chinese political culture and the Confucian tradition are similar but not identical.     

Beijing's new thinking on security strategy

Beijing is refocusing its foreign strategy in the Asian Pacific region. This article examines Beijing's new thinking on security strategy in the post‐Cold War Asian‐Pacific region. Drawing from the recent strategic debate in China, the author discusses three defining areas in the new security strategy: military strategy, defense development strategy, and foreign policy and security strategy. It is argued that thinking in security strategy has become more regional oriented, sophisticated and compatible with foreign policy. The implication of China's defense modernization for regional security is controversial. In the short run, China's military posture will not change balance of power at the regional level, but it will significantly affect outcomes of future territorial conflicts on China's periphery. In the long run, Beijing's role in Asian‐Pacific security remains uncertain.     

Soldiers,statesmen, strategic culture and China's 1950 intervention in Korea

Is China a rational, peaceful, and defensive‐minded power or an irrational, bellicose, and expansionist state? Are Chinese soldiers more hawkish than Chinese statesmen? Many analysts remark on the growing influence in foreign affairs of the PLA in the post‐Deng era. There is no consensus, however, on what this increasing influence will mean in practice. This article analyzes the attitudes of civilian and military figures toward Beijing's 1950 intervention in Korea and concludes that soldiers are no more hawkish than statesmen and, in many instances, less so. The findings suggest that China's strategic culture does not embody a single tradition and that civil‐military relations exert considerable influence on decisions to initiate war. All this indicates that the growing influence of the military does not necessarily mean a more bellicose China.     

Cooperation Opportunity or Confrontation Catalyst? The implication of China's naval development for China–US relations

Since the mid-1990s, China's navy has witnessed remarkable progress in force-projection capability build-up which has enabled it to move from coastal waters to the deep oceans. The continuing naval modernization process has aroused deep-rooted suspicions and two prevailing assumptions that these new capabilities will be used to challenge US maritime dominance and to fulfill national reunification of Taiwan. This article examines the validity of the hypotheses and points out that China has neither the intention nor the capabilities to pursue these objectives. By referring to the priority on China's defense agenda and imminent threat identification, this article suggests that naval modernization will enhance China's capabilities to contribute to global commons, including protection of sea lanes of communications and addressing nontraditional security threats, which will provide new opportunities and dynamics for China–US cooperation, rather than for confrontation.     

Towards an Integrated Theory of Chinese Foreign Policy: bringing leadership personality back in

This article tries to integrate the theories of personality type and Chinese foreign policy studies. It finds that theories of personality offer a new perspective on the study of Chinese foreign policy and help to better explain the differences in China's foreign policy under Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, including their international orientation, the main themes of China's foreign policy during their respective times in office, their policies towards the major powers, as well as those towards small countries. Theoretically, such integration contributes to the development of a more general theory of foreign policy analysis that would travel better beyond the borders of the American case. Empirically it highlights the necessity and benefit of an integrated approach bringing leadership personality back into the center of the analysis while taking into account other levels of analysis in the study of Chinese foreign policy.     

Xiao‐kang: Deng Xiaoping's socio‐economic development target for China

Ever since xiao‐kang or XK, literally meaning a ‘relatively comfortable life’, was first slated by Deng Xiaoping in 1979 to be China's main development target, the concept has become a codeword for China's socio‐economic development. It was incorporated in several major Party documents and formally adopted as the key development target by three consecutive Five‐Year Plans. What is the real meaning of XK? This paper analyses China's first XK Index which was published in 1992, based on a cluster of economic and social indicators relating to income, food consumption, housing, and human resource development. It will be seen that XK is actually a normative concept, fuzzy and grossly imprecise, especially when applied to a transitional economy like China. What constitutes XK to Deng may well be perceived differently by the new generation of Chinese. Such is the continuing social challenge of China's economic development.     

Peasant challenge in post‐communist China

Peasants constitute about 73% of China's population. To a large extent, the success of China's modernization program and transition depends on where peasants are heading. Peasants have posed new challenges for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the 1990s after 17‐year economic reform. This article argues that these challenges derive from the empowerment of the peasants since the mid‐1980s. How well the CCP could deal with these challenges directly concerns China's political stability and reform. Through the examination of the evolution of the peasant‐CCP relations and of the implications of the challenges for China in the 1990s and beyond, this article raises an open question for China scholars to address.     

Lost in revolution and reform: The socioeconomic pains of China's red guards generation, 1966–1996

This paper examines why the socioeconomic life of China's Red Guards generation has been difficult in both Mao's time and in the post‐Mao reform era. It shows that Mao's Cultural Revolution destroyed the normalcy of society and prevented this generation from securing the life they expected. When reform moved China toward a market economy, their past misfortunes produced their present disadvantages. Their limited education disqualified them from the opportunities of employment and career promotion; their protracted sent‐down to the countryside postponed their marriage and normal social life; and their longtime economic hardships debilitated their market competitiveness. Mao's revolution made them ill‐prepared for the coming economic liberty, yet the post‐Mao reform, instead of compensating them for their distress, left them behind when it pursued market efficiency.     

Leaders,coalition politics,and policy‐formulation in China: The great leap forward revisited

This article is a detailed critique of the thesis contained in David Bachman's book on the origins of the Great Leap Forward (GLF). By adopting the so‐called “neo‐institutional” approach, Bachman argues that Li Fuchun and Bo Yibo, leaders of a “Planning and Heavy Industry Coalition” “which had defeated a rival “Finance Coalition “ in 1957, were responsible for initiating and determining the development strategy of the GLF. It follows that Mao's role in the “leap” was very limited; the GLF was made possible when he gave official blessing to the programs of the victorious coalition. The author examines the historical and documentary sources on the GLF to demonstrate the contradictions contained in Bachman's theoretical framework, and the many faulty ways he interprets the data. He argues that Bachman's attempt to debunk the Mao‐dominant model in policy‐making during the GLF is a failure.     

History,Tradition and the China Dream: socialist modernization in the World of Great Harmony

How will China influence world politics in the twenty-first century? Many people answer this question by looking to Chinese history, and particularly to traditional models of Chinese world order. This essay seeks to complicate this question by asking which history, and which tradition? While it is common to look at China's pre-modern history as ‘tradition’, this essay argues that we also need to appreciate how ‘socialism’ is treated as a tradition alongside Chinese civilization. It does this by examining how China's public intellectuals appeal to two seemingly odd sources: Mao Zedong's 1956 speech ‘Strengthen Party Unity and Carry Forward Party Traditions’, and the ‘Great Harmony’ passage from the two millennia-old Book of Rites. It will argue that these two passages are employed as a way of salvaging socialism; the ideological transition thus is not from communism to nationalism, but to a curious combination of socialism and Chinese civilization. This new socialist/civilization dynamic integrates equality and hierarchy into a new form of statism, which is involved in a global competition of social models. Or to put it another way, what these two passages have in common is not necessarily a positive ideal, but a common enemy: liberalism, the West and the United States.     

China's Prolonged Stability and Political Future: Same political system,different policies and methods

Contrary to the earlier political upheavals which culminated in the 1989 Prodemocracy Movement, China has achieved an extended stability in the 1990s. This paper argues that the prolonged stability resulted from a set of changes in China's state‐society relations, and much of it was related to the 1989 movement. After the 1989 movement, the CCP veterans selected younger leaders who were both reform-minded and had a Machiavellian sense of politics. This new leadership skillfully managed the economy and contained dissident activities from public attention. Reform and the booming economy also provided many opportunities for intellectuals and students and turned them from the earlier economic 'losers' into the current 'winners'. As market forces penetrated into China more deeply and the state no longer took charge of everything as it used to, the Chinese became less interested in national politics, and political conflicts localized. This paper also argues that although China's state‐society relations underwent great changes, the state still bases its legitimacy on performance and is thus intrinsically unstable. A political reform that aims at changing the basis of state legitimation becomes crucial.     

Environmental management by law in China: The Guangzhou experience∗

Taking enviornmental management in Guangzhou as an example, this article explores the theory and practice of Communist China's idea of “environmental management by law.” Based on the Guangzhou experience, it argues that environmental management by law in China is mainly an administrative system of environmental management which takes law strictly as a tool for efficient and effective environmental protection. This system is operated on the principle of ‘rule by law’, and is the antithesis of the Maoist practice of “rule by person.” Contrary to its Western counterpart, China's environmental management system is built on a state‐centered conception of administrative law instead of a ‘right‐centered’ one which is the core of the ‘rule of law’ tradition.     

Municipal leadership and interest‐oriented mass participation: The process of housing reform plan in Shanghai 2

In the light of China's leadership transformation—from revolutionary to technocratic—in the reform era, this paper attempts to explore the new leadership through a case study of making of the Shanghai housing reform plan in 1991. After delineating housing problems and previous reforms in the mega‐city, this paper examines the process of the making of China's most comprehensive housing reform hereto, which inevitably invited conflicts of interests among social groups, especially between the ordinary urban residents who were in disadvantageous positions and the cadres who by and large benefited from old housing policies under China's planning system. The principal conclusion of the paper is that the ways of making the housing reform plan indicate that the current leadership is more responsive to ordinary people's interests and opinions than the Maoist leadership, even though both have much in common as the former inherites the latter.     

论邓小平“先富共富”的辩证法思想

在邓小平的"先富共富”论中,唯物辩证法的精髓得到了充分的展开和运用,马克思主义唯物辩证法的新境界得到了进一步的拓展和深化.随着我国现代化事业的整体推进,"先富共富”的辩证法思想,必将日益显现出其重要的实践指导作用.     

The neo‐authoritarian dilemma and the labor force: Control and bankruptcy vs freedom and instability

Neo‐authoritarian leaders confront one of their greatest dilemmas when attempting to decide what to do about China's non‐agricultural labor force. Should leaders continue to maintain short‐term order and stability by providing comparatively comfortable employment and benefits to a state‐sponsored workforce, even as two‐thirds of all state enterprises are experiencing financial difficulties and central government deficits are rising? Or should they permit the development of a free market for labor, even though the full implications of a free market — hundreds of millions of surplus rural laborers flooding the cities, tens of millions of surplus urban laborers laid off — are so destabilizing that they are difficult to contemplate? This article discusses the extent to which a neo‐authoritarian program to reform the labor market has succeeded in practice, and it assesses the destabilizing effects of the program. Specifically, it outlines the goals of neo‐authoritarians as they struggle to reform the labor market; the daunting problems that they confront in this struggle; and their limited successes to date. Despite some successful reforms, the article concludes that ‘the neo‐authoritarian dilemma’ with respect to the labor force — stability vs economic modernization — has not been solved.     

Ideological and political tendencies of factions in the red guard movement

This paper observes the most important ideological and political tendencies of the Red Guard Movement during the first three years of China's Cultural Revolution. This paper focuses on the differences between them—the Old Red Guards, conservative Red Guards, rebel Red Guards and ultraleft Red Guards. The Old Red Guards were the initiators of the Red Guard movement. They mainly attacked the intellectuals, overthrown ‘class enemies’ and some leaders in the educational and cultural fields. The core members of the Old Red Guards were children of leaders. They stressed their red family background and strove for political and social superiority and privilege. The conservative Red Guards followed the example of the Old Red Guards but depended on and defended the local Party's leadership. The rebel Red Guards mainly attacked the power holders and the organs of the Party and government. They came from the social groups that had been out of power. In politics, they relied on the support of Mao and the left wing of the Party. The ultraleft Red Guards negated and criticized the political leadership and the existing system as a whole. They were in small groups and suppressed by Mao and his headquarters but they left independent thinking on Chinese politics and society.     

The Social and Political Implications of China's WTO Membership

China will join the WTO soon. This article does not question the rationale of China's decision to join the WTO; nor does it challenge the premise that, all in all, the potential benefits from WTO membership outweigh the potential costs, at least in the long term. Rather, it focuses on the social and political implications of China's WTO membership. It is assumed that even if WTO membership is potentially a productivity-enhancing move for China, the benefits and costs of such a change will not be evenly distributed. Unless there is a mechanism that can induce or force the winners to compensate the losers, distributive conflicts between the two groups will be inevitable. Such conflicts may weaken or even erode political support for globalization. Thus, to remain committed to globalization, the government of an open economy must play a role in redistributing gains and costs. The first section elaborates this analytical framework. The second section argues that Chinese reforms have changed from a win‐win game to a zero-sum game. As a result, China has turned itself from a relatively egalitarian society into one with huge and growing inequalities. The third section analyzes who will stand to win and lose when China joins the WTO. It predicts that precisely those social groups who have borne the costs of recent reforms will be hit hardest. More significantly, those losers happen to be the social groups that have long served as the political bases of the communist regime. WTO membership thus poses a challenge to the legitimacy of the Chinese government. The final section discusses the political implications of China's WTO membership.     

Reform ideology,political commitment and resource transfor: An alternative model for the explanation of China's economic reform∗

One of the most intriguing ironies of our era is the result of recent changes in the former communist world. Whereas the “democratizing” Russia and Eastern European countries are caught in repeated political as well as economic crises, the “unrepentant” authoritarian China and Vietnam are seeing their economies booming and more market‐oriented. Such an irony poses many important questions. One of the questions is how China has managed to get where it is. This paper represents an attempt to address this question. Firstly, it will briefly outline where economic reforms have brought China so far. Secondly, it will discuss two popular models used to explain China's economic performance. And finally, it will develop an alternative model that combines politics and economy in accounting for China's reform experience.