Governance and Politics of China

Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–44527–8 © Tony Saich 2001, 2004, 2011, 2015 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identifi ed as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First edition 2001 Second edition 2004 Third edition 2011 Fourth edition 2015 Published by PALGRAVE Palgrave in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave is a global imprint of the above companies and is represented throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978–1–137–44528–5 hardback ISBN 978–1–137–44527–8 paperback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India. Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–44527–8 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–44527–8 Contents List of Maps, Boxes, Figures and Tables x Preface to the Fourth Edition xii Romanization, Chinese Units of Measurement and Statistics xvi List of Abbreviations xvii Introduction xix 1 Diversity within Unity 1 A land of diversity 2 The impact of CCP policy 16 2 Political History: 1949–2012 29 Parameters of policy debate 29 Leaning to one side – China and the Soviet model: 1949–55 32 The origins of a Chinese path to socialism: 1955–62 36 The radicalization of politics and the resurrection of class struggle: 1962–78 40 The Third Plenum and the initial reform agenda: 1978–84 44 Economic troubles and political instability: 1985–91 49 Return to economic reform, boom and moderation: 1992–97 54 Managing reform without Deng: 1997–2002 56 Attempting to balance growth with social equity: 2002–12 58 3 China’s New Leaders and Their Challenges: 2012–Present 65 Succession and the purge of Bo Xilai 65 CCP and NPC congresses: November 2012–March 2013 69 Political priorities 74 Third Plenum of the Eighteenth Central Committee (November 2013): outlining a platform for action 81 4 The Chinese Communist Party 85 Party organization and membership 85 The political culture of the CCP 104 The role of the CCP in the political system 109 5 The Central Governing Apparatus 116 Evaluation and perception of government performance 119 Central government 123 The legal system, coercive control and rights 137 The military and the political system 146 vii Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–44527–8 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–44527–8 viii Contents 6 Governance Beyond the Centre 154 The organization of local government 154 The province as a unit of analysis 158 Regional inequality 167 Relations between the centre and the localities: the fi scal picture 172 The consequences for local governance 176 Perceptions of local government performance 184 Analysing the local state: corporatism, predation and negotiation 187 7 The Chinese State and Society 191 The Maoist period: an autonomous state and a state-dominated society 191 State–society relations under reforms: a negotiated state 198 Impact on the sanctioned organizational structure of representation 204 Participation at the grassroots and the role of elections 211 Non-sanctioned participation 217 8 Urbanization and Rural–Urban Relations 224 Rural–urban relations 224 Migration 229 Urbanization 235 9 Economic Policy 244 Policy-making and implementation 245 General outline of economic policy 249 A Chinese model of development? 253 Industrial policy 257 Rural policy 267 10 Social Policy 276 Family planning: problems of policy coordination and policy evasion 277 Social policy and the transition in China 282 Key features of China’s welfare system 285 Pension reform in the urban areas: cutting the Gordian knot of the SOEs 292 Healthcare in rural China 298 Poverty alleviation and social assistance 303 11 Foreign Policy 313 China and globalization 314 China and the region 321 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–44527–8 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–44527–8 Contents ix China and the United States 327 China’s foreign economic relations 338 12 China’s Future Challenges 344 The challenge of constraints: environmental degradation and resource shortages 344 The internal challenge: corruption 354 The information challenge: blogs, tweets and the Internet 364 The fi nal challenge: good governance and political reform 368 Further Reading 375 Bibliography 381 Index 403 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–44527–8 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–44527–8 Chapter 1 Diversity within Unity Some years ago, I was in a jeep driving down a mountain road in rural Sichuan and was held up by a long queue of traffic meandering down the hill to a new bridge that was being dedicated. Getting out of the jeep I wandered down to the bridge to witness an elaborate ceremony complete with the lighting of incense and various actions to ward off the evil spirits. Somewhat facetiously, I began to ask those waiting what the Communist Party must think about this ceremony as it clearly represented an example of ‘superstitious practice’ so soundly denounced during the Cultural Revolution (1976–77) and still denounced today, albeit with less severity. I was greeted with puzzled faces before one person replied that the man in the exotic robes leading the ceremony was the party secretary. As the most important person in the village, he had no choice but to dedicate a new bridge that would link it to the world outside and bring greater wealth. The event set me thinking about the relationship between the party, the state and society and between China’s tradition and modernity. Did the party secretary believe in the ceremony and its power to conjure up good spirits to protect the bridge or was he simply going through the motions to increase credibility among the local population? Was the party secretary importing the power of the party into the village community or bringing heterodox beliefs into the party or both? The traditional nature of the ceremony contrasted with the objective of building the bridge that would integrate the local community with the world outside. The bridge provided the link to the market that is the driving force for development in the post-Mao years. Such small events are daily occurrences throughout rural and urban China and they cause us to question any notion of the country as a monolith. China comprises a patchwork of local cultures and histories that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its nationalist and imperial predecessors have tried to weld into a unitary entity. While the CCP may have tried to penetrate society more thoroughly than its predecessors, the last 35 years have revealed the residual power of local cultures. More recently, I was walking out of the tranquillity of the cradle of the communist revolution in Yan’an, where Mao had moved his Red Army in the mid-1930s, only to be besieged by the trinket sellers who are the products of China’s economic reform – from Mao Zedong’s 1 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–44527–8 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–44527–8 2 Governance and Politics of China China to Deng Xiaoping’s within a few paces. The market responds to the desires of consumers rather than to those of communist ideo- logues, something clearly seen by the books on sale. While those sold inside Yan’an, such as Mao Zedong Enters Yan’an, tell the official story of the revolution, the books on sale outside, often under the counter, tell a different tale. They range from Mao Zedong’s notori- ous womanizing, through the inner secrets of who destroyed whom in the party’s new headquarters (Zhongnanhai in Beijing), the corruption of former leaders of Beijing and Shanghai, to unofficial biographies of former general secretaries, Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang. These are the CCP’s hidden histories, those the conservative party veterans do not want their people to know about – yet they are the ones that the people with interest and money want to buy. Rather than a revolution- ary world full of selfless heroes, they tell stories of betrayal, corruption and greed. Whose history, whose politics? This warns us not to take official pronouncements at face value but to peer behind the public facade to discover the reality of how the Chinese polity really works. This chapter and subsequent ones seek to introduce the reader to the diversity of China, its land and its peoples, and how CCP policy since 1949 has affected them. A land of diversity As the two anecdotes reveal, China is a very complex land where mul- tiple realities are operating beneath a facade of a unitary nation-state. However, this does not mean, as some have claimed, that China may fall apart into its regional components as a result of the reforms (Segal, 1994) or that a de facto federalist structure is emerging (Wang, 1995).

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