China's Political Reforms

China’s Political Reforms: A Net Assessment By KENNETH LIEBERTHAL ABSTRACT: China’s leaders since the death of Mao Zedong have tried to reform the political system so as to reduce the level of political coercion, increase the use of rational/legal processes, put talented individuals into responsible positions, enhance their capacity to base decisions on pragmatic criteria, and restore and strengthen the legitimacy of the polity. Their efforts to further these goals have produced important results, but the reforms still have not taken root. The reforms have been hedged in by fundamental untouchables, resisted by uncooperative cadres, and undercut by the inherent incompatibility of different components of the reform package itself. The prognosis for the various elements of the reform effort depends both on keeping the initiative in the hands of the reformers at the top of the Communist party and on achieving good results in the economic arena. Kenneth Lieberthal is professor of political science and research associate at the Center for Chinese Studies of the University of Michigan. Hefrequently visits the People’s Republic of China and has written many books, monographs, and articles on China’sforeign policy, national and local politics, and decision making. He consults for the Department of State and various other organizations. Professor Lieberthal formerly taught at Swarthmore College and served on the social science staff of the Rand Corporation. 19 20 Chinese have been trying to their policies seek to achieve the fol- TJL HErevamp their political system lowing goals: since 1977. Like related efforts in --to reduce the level of political economics,’ these political changes are a coercion throughout the system; reaction to the enormous problems that Mao Zedong bequeathed his successors -40 reduce the salience of patron- when he died in 1976. client relations, of factionalism, Mao’s gargantuan attempt in his last and of corruption while expanding decade to steer China away from a the role of rational/ legal processes in &dquo;revisionist&dquo; course left a political the polity and bringing into shambles. The Cultural Revolution’s power successors with functional encouragement of mass violence and expertise; factional conflict produced a radical de- --to enhance the capacity of the institutionalization of the political political organs to reach decisions system. Bureaucratic information chan- based on pragmatic criteria; and nels became blocked or dis- seriously -to restore and the torted. Factional conflict affected both strengthen legitimacy of the polity. personnel appointments and policy outcomes. Political coercion within the The resulting political system will ideally governing bodies and toward the be more capable of managing a wrench- populace reached extraordinarily high ing evolution into modernity while levels. Fundamental disagreements maintaining the country’s political divided even the highest-level leaders stability. In more detail, the following over such basic issues as the rules by reform initiatives have been taken to which the system should be governed. date. The leadership’s capacity to acquire good information, to base decisions on Reducing coercion the substantive merits of issues, to have There has been much attention those decisions implemented in a devoted in the Western media to the prudent and conscientious way, and to vicissitudes of China’s toward elicit support from the population for policy intellectual freedom. The this entire process had all seriously &dquo;anti-pollu- eroded between 1966 and 1976. tion&dquo; campaign that flared up in the fall of 1983 raised the specter both domes- and abroad of another bout of REFORM GOALS AND tically INITIATIVES radical know-nothingism. Although the line that defines the politically permis- In response to this situation, Deng sible continues to shift erratically, two Xiaoping and his colleagues launched a basic changes have, on balance, made wide-ranging series of efforts to reform China significantly less coercive. the In broad political system. terms, First, political labels on individuals have been removed step by step. China 1. Good overviews of the economic reform as of 1976 practiced severe discrimination effort and its results are available in, for example, of based the symposium published in the China Business against large groups people on criteria. To have a Review, pp. 8-27 (Nov.-Dec. 1983). solely political bad label-as a landlord, capitalist, rightist, 21 bad element, and so forth-severely at a time when unorthodox thoughts limited one’s opportunities for employ- brought disaster. Since 1978, however, a ment, marriage, and perhaps even wide range of views is solicited on many freedom. This system has in the main problems-although not on fundamen- been dismantled since 1978. tal goals and priorities. Ministerial Virtually all of the approximately journals, technical periodicals, the 150,000 remaining rightists have been general media, and private conversa- restored to full citizenship. Landlords tions are often spiced with relatively and capitalists have generally been pro- clear advocacy of competing positions. claimed to be peasants and workers now The reduction in political coercion, in that they have &dquo;adequately reformed.&dquo; short, has permitted a very substantial About 2.9 million Party members who improvement in the quality of discourse were judged to be counterrevolutionaries on public policy. during the Cultural Revolution have been rehabilitated. And count- formally Rational/legal processes less thousands-indeed, probably and the succession millions-of others who bore one stig- Much of the effort since 1978 has matizing label or another have received aimed at relief via the efforts to redress past re-institutionalizing the polity mistakes .2 and, relatedly, at putting people of The formal declaration that class talent in leadership positions so these struggle and political campaigns would strengthened institutions will produce outcomes. As the Cultural Revo- no longer be the driving forces of good lution undermined standard China’s revolution gave doctrinal under- operating pinning to this substantial decline in the procedures and immersed individuals in a terror-filled ranks of the pariah groups. Campaigns environment, patron-client ties as to and struggles in the past had sometimes emerged the major way appeared from afar to involve fairly accomplish tasks and get ahead. Factions based on that ex- high-minded attempts to raise the pop- personal loyalties tended across formal institutional boun- ulace to new levels of political purity. But in China the police and the labor daries became key combatants for the of the These camps were two of the key instruments spoils political system. of these so-called consciousness-raising factional ties were nurtured by exchang- efforts. ing favors that ranged from personnel Second, the decline in coercion has appointments to procurement of scarce of been manifested in genuine encourage- resources, provision political support ment of discussion and debate. or protection, and other similar prac- tices. In based on During Mao’s last decade, even top short, corruption leaders found that almost anything they political power became a defining char- acteristic of China’s said might well be regarded primarily as politics.’ This insidious had an indicator of their political orthodoxy- development many unhealthy ramifications for the 2. Richard Krauss analyzes this system of 3. On Chinese factions, see, for example, political labels in his Class and Class Conflict in Lucian Pye, The Dynamics of Chinese Politics Chinese Socialism (New York: Columbia Univer- (Cambridge, MA: Oelgeschlager, Gunn & Hain, sity Press, 1981). 1981). 22 political system. It became very difficult sures were preparatory to the projected to place the best-qualified people in three-year Party rectification campaign executive positions because these posi- that began in the winter of 1983-84. This tions were seen as part of the spoils of campaign is supposed to be aimed es- factional fighting. Rules on the books pecially at identifying and removing might affect forms and appearances, but those Party members who still support a they proved relatively weak in structuring more leftist position than current policy actual behavior. Political discipline and dictates. The campaign is also intended the prestige of the political apparatus to instill appropriate norms in the Party among the populace naturally suffered cadre. accordingly. Some political science liter- Beyond the use of disciplinary bodies ature notes that a little corruption can and related measures, a range of addi- have beneficent effects on the politics of tional initiatives aims at buttressing the a developing country,4 but the corrup- rational/legal elements in determining tion in China grew to such an extent that personnel appointments and policy out- it considerably harmed the polity. comes. For example, elections in which Sharp divisions over substantive candidates exceed posts have been held issues exacerbated the effects of corrup- for key government positions up to the tion, as corrupt relationships shielded level of the county. These can be-and individuals who opposed and sabotaged have been-manipulated by the author- current policy.’ This lingering phenom- ities, but they have also to some limited enon still endangers the political and extent reduced the ability of individuals economic reforms because foot dragging to use political appointments as a way

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