Journal of Contemporary China ISSN: 1067-0564 (Print) 1469-9400 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjcc20 Politics of Anticorruption in China: Paradigm Change of the Party’s Disciplinary Regime 2012–2017 Ling Li To cite this article: Ling Li (2019) Politics of Anticorruption in China: Paradigm Change of the Party’s Disciplinary Regime 2012–2017, Journal of Contemporary China, 28:115, 47-63, DOI: 10.1080/10670564.2018.1497911 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10670564.2018.1497911 © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Published online: 19 Jul 2018. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 1681 View Crossmark data Citing articles: 1 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cjcc20 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY CHINA 2019, VOL. 28, NO. 115, 47–63 https://doi.org/10.1080/10670564.2018.1497911 Politics of Anticorruption in China: Paradigm Change of the Party’s Disciplinary Regime 2012–2017 Ling Li University of Vienna, Austria ABSTRACT This article traces the process of Xi Jinping’s campaign in 2012–2017 and explains how an anticorruption effort has been transformed into an exercise of power-consolidation for his office. The findings of this article are three-fold. First, the power-consolidation process has benefited from a combination of an ideological campaign and a disciplinary campaign, which were not only synchronized but also feed into one another to achieve a shared goal. Second, the campaign became politicized around midterm and intensified afterwards. The pace of progress of the cam- paign coincided with Xi Jinping’s advancement of power. Third, the most significant outcome of Xi Jinping’s campaign is not the numbers of disciplined corrupt officials but the paradigm-change in the disciplinary regime of the Party: first, the reversal of the depoliticization process of the Party’s disciplinary regime; second, the retention of temporarily mobilized anticorruption resources; and third the simplification of evi- dence production procedure. The combined result is a considerable expansion of the CCDI’s anticorruption investigative capacities and a significant increase Xi Jinping’s leverage to impose political loyalty and compliance upon Party officials in the future. Introduction From an obscure bureaucrat and political underdog1 to the ‘Chairman of everything’, who is expected to ‘change the history of the world’,2 China’s president Xi Jinping has demonstrated remarkable ability for political manoeuvring which has captured the imagination of journalists and political analysts around the world.3 While observers are distracted by the irresistible temptation to speculate on the future, they tend to neglect one question, a question that might have profound implications for our understanding of Chinese politics but is seldom asked: how come Xi, someone who was considered lacking charisma, enjoying feeble factional support and having shown mediocre administrative performance records,4 managed to consolidate power so quickly and effectively in a highly contested political environment such as that of the Politburo? Occasionally, a weak political leader might strengthen his position by capitalizing on incidental CONTACT Ling LI [email protected] 1Sangkuk Lee, ‘An Institutional Analysis of Xi Jinping’s Centralization of Power’, Journal of Contemporary China 26(105), (2017), pp. 325–336. p. 326. footnote 5. 2Javier C. Hernandez, ‘China’s “Chairman of Everything”: Behind Xi Jinping’s Many Titles’, New York Times, (25 October 2017), https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/25/world/asia/china-xi-jinping-titles-chairman.html. (accessed 22 June 2018); Graham Allison, ‘The chairman of everything: why Chinese president Xi Jinping will change history’, New Statesman, (4 December 2017), https://www.economist.com/china/2016/04/02/chairman-of-everything. (accessed 22 June 2018). 3Macabe Keliher and Hsinchao Wu, ‘Corruption, Anticorruption, and the Transformation of Political Culture in Contemporary China’, The Journal of Asian studies 75(1), (2016), pp. 5–18. 4Cheng Li, China’s Midterm Jockeying: Gearing Up for 2012 (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2010). © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. 48 L. LI events, such as an existential threat, either putative or validated, from a foreign enemy. Such moments of crisis might help a leader quell political infighting, inspire solidarity, command following that may not otherwise have been available to him. However, none of these occurred during Xi Jinping’s first term. Then, what else could have enabled him? In a recent article which appeared in this journal, Sangkuk Lee made an intriguing ‘institutional analysis’ and attributed Xi Jinping’s political achievement to the power of enlightenment of a theory called ‘Open Complex Giant System (OCGS)’ .5 The leading author of the OCGS theory, which can be traced back to 1990, is the late natural scientist Qian Xuesen. Known as the ‘father of aerospace engineering’ in China, Qian was also an avid believer and campaigner for extrasensory perception, more commonly known as the sixth sense.6 Inspired by his observations of extrasensory perceptions, Qian drew analogy between the function of human body and mind, the working of the universe and the operation of human societies..7 The OCGS considers that certain systems, including social system, are open, complex and gigantic and that in dealing with such systems, one should change the conventional scientific paradigm and replace reductionist thinking and linear approaches with systematic thinking and a holistic approach, for instance, through cross-disciplinary and ‘cross-intelligence’ (human and artificial) collaboration8 According to Sangkuk Lee, the OCGS has inspired Xi Jinping as well as his colleagues and became the epistemological foundation of Xi’s broad political programme called ‘comprehensive deepening reform’. Searching in a vast collection of Xi Jinping’s speeches, Lee found the following terms, ‘whole’, ‘comprehensive’, ‘systematic’, ‘long-term’, ‘two centenary goals’, ‘top-down design’, ‘overall planning’, ‘coordinated steps’, and earnestly deployed them as proof of Xi’s appreciation of and commitment to the OCGS.9 Lee further believed that Xi’s decisions to establish and head a cluster of small leading groups, which gives Xi more power than others in all key sectors, are guided by the OCGS because centralizing power is a necessary step to actualize ‘top-down design’ and ‘overall planning’, wisdom enshrined in the OCGS.10 One can perhaps understand the appeal of a ‘holistic theory’ to a Chinese audience, whose philosophy is significantly influenced by a ‘holistic’ ontological orientation. However, to use the appearance of a few refashioned vague concepts as evidence of a presumed causal link between an underdeveloped theory and a complicated political process requires a number of leaps of faith that any seasoned observer of Chinese politics would never be comfortable to take. To start with, in inventing such a link, the author neglected the fact that in a single party-state the Party monopolizes the power of policy-making with respect to all issues of significance. Therefore, all national policies are in essence products of ‘top-down design’ and ‘overall planning’. Furthermore, to consider that an academic concept can unite an otherwise divided Politburo due to entrenched factional interests and persuade its members to agree to a redistribution of power among themselves in a way that benefits one over all others11 is a crude oversimplification of the matter, to say the least. It is also against the very spirit of the so-called complex systems ‘theory’ that the author seems to value. Needless to say, to address and fully explain a power shift in the Politburo is a daunting task for any analyst at any time. The challenge rests not only in the complexity of power dynamics but also in the opaqueness of the operation of the institution concerned. This latter factor causes a significant informa- tion gap between what has in fact happened and what we know has happened and can easily blind us to 5Xuesen Qian, ‘一个科学新领域——开放的复杂巨系统及其方法论 [A new field of science—A open complex giant system and its methodology]’, 城市发展研究[Urban Development Studies] 12(5), (2005), pp. 526–532. 6Qian had once spoken to an audience of the Chinese Association of Extrasensory Science that the study of extrasensory perception had the potential to trigger a scientific revolution that is more impactful than the discovery of relativity theory. For more details, see 涂建华 Tu Jianhua, ‘特异功能20年历程及其特点 [20-Year History of Extrasensory Perception and its characteristics]’, 湖南城市学院学报 [Hunan City College Journal] 30(4), (2009), pp. 14–19. 7Lu Mingsen, ‘“开放的复杂巨系统”概念的形成 [The formation of the concept of “open complex giant system”]’, 中国工程 科学 [Engineering Science of China] 6(5), (2004), pp. 17–23. 8Qian, ‘一个科学新领域——开放的复杂巨系统及其方法论 [A new field of science—A open complex giant system and its methodology].’ 9Lee, ‘An Institutional Analysis of Xi Jinping’s Centralization of Power’. pp. 330–333. 10Ibid. pp. 333–335. 11Ibid. pp. 327–329. JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY CHINA 49 critical factors and relevant dynamic changes and lead us to skewed analysis. Moreover, studying Xi’srise to power has an additional challenge because when dealing with a contemporary issue one lacks the information that may possibly be made available only at a later time. On the other hand, such contemporaneity may serve certain benefits. It may enhance our informational base because it allows us the access to information that may be discarded or lost in the archiving process at a later stage.