political of china analytical paper

The most recent stop on this path to change was a major

meeting of the party’s Central Committee last week. It

released a communique on ensuring the party’s leadership in

“the socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics.” While

the tension between party rule and an impartial judiciary

remains, the communique called for concrete steps that

should allow judges to hold local officials more accountable

for their actions. Courts with cross-boundary jurisdictions

may let judges rule against local leaders without having their

own resources cut. Future evaluations will also include

measures of performance on rule of law indicators.

The centralization’s most noted component is the increased

activity and prominence of the Central Commission for

Discipline Inspection (CCDI). Under Wang Qishan, the CCDI

has targeted more and higher-level officials than previous

efforts in the reform era, including Zhou Yongkang, a former

Politburo Standing Committee member and Xu Caihou, a

former Politburo member and vice chairman of the Central

Military Commission. The CCDI has expanded, and its

officers have ascended in the local political hierarchy. The

center’s agents in the provinces can now check local

authority.

The centralization of authority can be seen even in domains

such as urbanization policy. As I write in “Cities and Stability:

Urbanization, Redistribution, and Regime Survival in China,”

the Chinese government has managed urbanization

throughout its reign, promoting urban stability and

attempting to restrict migration to and the size of the largest

cities in the country. However, in recent years, there has been

a push in the opposite direction, towards building true

megacities in and around Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

Yet this push appears to be more related to the desire for

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increased central control than purely about urban planning,

assaulting the “fortress economies” of the different regions.

As Zhang Gui, a researcher at Hebei Technology University

put it, “Right now, every official will think of his own region

first – from the construction of projects to investment,”

because they were judged by the performance of these

statistical measures.

This change is more than just centralization. The party has

revived the Maoist idea of the Mass Line, encouraging

party cadres to share in the experiences of ordinary Chinese

and avoid hedonism and extravagance. Some of these officials

also engaged in self-criticisms that were broadcast on

national television; Hebei’s party secretary Zhou Benshun

stated, “I cared very much about development speed and

economic volumes but not as much about people’s own

interests.”

This self-criticism recognizes the disjuncture between the

rapid growth of China’s economic aggregates and the

everyday lives of Chinese. Local officials had been evaluated

and promoted based on the growth of a few key statistics.

How they went about achieving that growth was of less

importance for the center. With a free hand, local officials

grabbed, resulting in economic corruption and wasteful

investments. Even more, I show in a forthcoming paper

evidence consistent with local officials “juking the stats,”

adjusting politically sensitive numbers (GDP growth rates) at

politically sensitive times. The center’s inability to observe

local officials may have emerged from a recognition that

allowing them freedom of action might encourage growth, but

as conditions have changed, that freedom has become

threatening.

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These economic pathologies come alongside political

problems. The pervasive corruption that found China leading

a global survey of bribery undermined public confidence in

the regime. If the regime’s legitimacy had been in large part

based on its performance, controlling local officials that

threaten that performance makes political and economic

sense. This new mode calls for upright officials to govern

China in a traditional, moral manner. Moving the basis for

the regime’s legitimacy away from economic performance

when it appears that performance is likely to slow has some

obvious logic as well.

The party has maintained that while local officials may be

corrupt, the center is pure. By tightening the strings

controlling local officials, the center is tying its fate to theirs,

confident in its ability to change behavior. While the vision of

a China governed by the humane authority of a sage ruler has

some appeal, centralized power in the hands of a single

individual comes with serious dangers. Rae Yang entitled her

Cultural Revolution memoir “Spider Eaters” based on a quote

from Lu Xun:

Many historic lessons were obtained through

tremendous sacrifice. Such as eating food—if

something is poisonous, we all seem to know it. It is

common sense. But in the past many people must

have eaten this food and died so that now we know

better. Therefore I think the first person who ate

crabs was admirable. If not a hero, who would dare

eat such creatures? Since someone ate crabs, others

must have eaten spiders as well. However, they were

not tasty. So afterwards people stopped eating them.

These people also deserve our heartfelt gratitude.

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In this new China, the question becomes has the

party learned the lessons of the disasters of Mao’s

government by whim.

Jason Lyall is Associate Professor of Political Science at

Yale University. His work examines wartime dynamics of

violence, including how civilian casualties and

development aid shape the attitudes and actions of

civilians and insurgents during civil wars. Posts reflect his

personal views.

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