Globalisation and Legitimacy

So what sustains party legitimacy in a globalised China of Jiang and Hu that is no longer recognisably Communist to many? Who runs China therefore and under what ideology if any? I’ll consider those questions in this post and in the next I’ll consider the very important question of what the key problems are in the vital countryside and the action the CCP is taking in attempting to resolve them.

Many in the West predicted that the CCP would go the way of the Communist parties of Eastern Europe. Evidently they saw the breakdown of Communist ideology as necessitating an end to the rule of Communist parties. I may ask why the CCP alone has been able to maintain its legitimacy but I should also allow that it may not be for all time. Nevertheless it has remained in power and there must be a reason.

The CCP has given thought to this question and has come up with five basic reasons for its legitimacy:

1) It has fostered and maintained enormous levels of economic growth;

2) Consequently living standards have increased [although inequality has also increased markedly, of course];

3) Especially from the mid 1990s, it has tried to promote its aims as nationalist and in the national interest (they point to what they promote as a successful history);

4) They are able to maintain social stability in accordance with their ‘neo-authoritarian’ and ‘Asian Values’ philosophies; and

5) They are working on improving their ethical standards and stamping out corruption.

Perhaps the most promising of these bases of legitimacy in the medium term is the appeal to nationalism but it is a double edged sword.

The powerful ‘culture fever’ that erupted following the CR was partly about reasserting pride in China’s imperial past and national pride generally at China’s historical and ongoing global status and is a positive asset to China as well as CCP legitimacy. Yet pride in turn has depended upon the recent advance in living standards to a large extent and has been dampened by a sense of humiliation at the unfairness of US hegemony and the success of Japan. The expected return of Taiwan to the Chinese fold has become a symbol of the reversal of that humiliation and Taiwan is not necessarily expected to be the be all and end all of that process. Japan is still sometimes seen as an enemy and not sufficiently punished for various war crimes.

The CCP is ‘cashing in’ on these feelings of humiliation in order to promote the sense of unity that it feels is in its immediate interests. This can be seen as necessary to provide the ostensible raison d’être for a post-Marxist CCP government but here is where nationalism has become a two edged sword. The government can also be criticised for the pace at which it addresses the humiliation of a great nation or fails to sufficiently represent the national interest well enough generally. Examples of this problem of popular nationalism include the reaction to WTO negotiations in 2001 (where the CCP was accused of giving away too much) and accusations that China has been too soft on Japan over wartime atrocities.

The CCP’s reaction to the above potential threat to its legitimacy has been to learn the lesson of Tiananmen. Party thinkers in leadership tend to see the lesson as: cracking down hard and early on dissent promotes stability.

Their verdict on Tiananmen has remained unchanged in recent years (despite recent talk of a re-evaluation) as evidenced by the extended prison terms (11 years) meted out to various democracy activists more recently (such as those of the China Democracy Party) and not since commuted (the re-evaluation of the ‘incident’ is yet to materialise).

The approach to the Falun Dafa (Falun Gong) is another result of this reaction. Practitioners were declared an ‘evil cult’ in 1999 and suppressed following a sit-in protest of around 10,000 of them following a scathing editorial against the group. The protest saw them surrounding Zhongnanhai (the residential area in central Beijing near Tiananmen reserved for much of the CCP high leadership). The evil seems to be that it is a challenge to CCP ideology. The group is critical of much of what the current CCP government seems to stand for. Jiang was the main hardliner at the time when it came to cracking down on what is actually a fairly harmless breathing practice called qigong. For more on suppression of this group, go to the group’s own websites.

The other issues being cracked down on are ethnic in nature and concern the Tibetans mainly in Tibet and the Muslims (mainly Uighur and mainly in Xinjiang (called East Turkistan or Uighurstan especially by some separatists)). The “War of Terror” almost couldn’t have come at a better time from the point of view of the CCP. The Chinese government now feels it more or less has the cover it needs to crack down as necessary and it does crack down (whether real terrorism is involved or not) as necessary. Of course China hasn’t been alone in revelling in the cover provided. Russia and Israel are two other notable cases, not to mention the US itself.

Who is in power (if not Marxists) is another question. The year 2002 marked a changing of the guard when Hu came to power but also most of the Politburo was also replaced.

Jiang finished his term as Party Secretary in 2002 (relinquishing that role to Hu) but provided some of the answers to that question as he left this formal role with his Three Represents.

The CCP constitution was amended in 2002 so that the ideology of the party was now formally: Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory and the important Ideology of “the Three Represents (三个代表)”. This last was what the party now stood for (represented). It stood for the most advanced forces of production, the most advanced culture and the fundamental interests of the broadest mass of the people. The shift here was that this suggested it was no longer a party explicitly of workers; it could also be the party of their bosses, and of intellectuals and artists. It now represented ‘advanced elements’ (who by virtue of being that were now also the only people eligible to be members of the party – so you could also be a worker and not eligible) rather than revolutionaries – the revolution was now over. This really just formalised what had already become the practice.

The leadership as I’ve mentioned was also shaken up. Hu assumed the leadership although he was the second youngest of the nine Politburo Standing Committee members.

All but one of the group were also qualified engineers (predominantly from the one technology university that Hu trained in engineering at, Qinghua) – the outlier, Wen Jiabao, was a geologist (trained at the Beijing Institute of Geology). Wen’s case shows that it was possible to be mentored in the party by a discredited leader (Zhao Ziyang in Wen’s case) and still reach the second or third highest rank in the PRC. Only Hu was kept on from the previous group and he was also the only member remaining who had been mentored by Deng. Most had been mentored by Jiang. There’s a joke in China that Qinghua produces China’s leaders and Beida (Beijing University) produces its prisoners. Here’s the group:

Name	Age	Profession	University	Mentor
Hu Jintao	59	Engineer	Qinghua	Deng Xiaoping
Wu Bangguo	61	Engineer	Qinghua	Jiang Zemin
Wen Jiabao	60	Geologist	Beijing Institute of Geology	Zhao Ziyang
Jia Qinglin	62	Engineer	Hebei Engineering College	Jiang Zemin
Zeng Qinghong	63	Engineer	Beijing Institute of Technology	Jiang Zemin
Huang Ju	64	Engineer	Qinghua	Jiang Zemin
Wu Guanzheng	64	Engineer	Qinghua	Jiang Zemin
Li Changchun	58	Engineer	Harbin Institute of Technology	Jiang Zemin
Luo Gan	67	Engineer	Beijing Institute of Iron & Steel	Li Peng

So it’s a technocratic group that have been well mentored in the business of government in the new China and that embraces the new business elites (who might otherwise become an opposition). The training of the group is not in political change, it’s in technocratic problem-solving and that is their focus.

This currently suits the business elites with whom they are intimately linked so it’s not yet in the interests of the business middle class to challenge the political position of this type of problem-solving state. From the orthodox Marxist point of view it is also still possible to view the business class as powerful and imaginative allies provided they remain securely yoked to the benefit of the CPP dictatorship. The times in China are indeed still interesting for Marxists today. To paraphrase Sun Zi, the CCP is keeping its friends close and its (at least potential) enemies closer. And the policy is currently working as the potential enemies are currently being kept happy with the amount of (close) influence they are able to have upon reforms as they occur.

In 2006, the CCP launched the “eight glories and eight disgraces (八榮八耻)” campaign. This is aimed at promoting compliance among the population and it was at least partly designed to be learnt about by rote by schoolchildren. This is how to be a good Communist today. Here are the eight of both:

1. It is glorious to adore the fatherland; it is a disgrace to harm the fatherland;

2. It is glorious to serve the people; it is a disgrace to disserve the people;

3. It is glorious to respect science; it is a disgrace to be ignorant and unenlightened;

4. It is glorious to work hard; it is a disgrace to be indolent;

5. It is glorious to promote unity and mutual help; it is a disgrace to be self-seeking;

6. It is glorious to be honest and trustworthy; it is a disgrace to be mercenary and profit-grabbing;

7. It is glorious to be disciplined and law abiding; it is a disgrace to violate laws and disciplines;

8. It is glorious to be willing to struggle; it is a disgrace to be sybaritic.

The next post will be on the rural issues that continue to plague China (and CCP responses).

Overview of the Early Years of the PRC

The CCP rode to power on a wave of popular support. Mao, the Supreme Ruler, was first in command with Liu Shaoqi, his deputy, and Zhou Enlai his Prime Minister (Premier) and head of government. Deng Xiaoping was already in the leadership mix as a junior minister who had also survived the Long March but his final ascendency would have to wait three more decades. The corrupt and virtually incompetent GMD had left China with much of its state treasure, leaving it bankrupt (and hoping to return to rule it again). The CCP wanted to remedy all of this as quickly as possible with much of the world seeming to want it to fail. They sought modernisation, strength and industrialisation.

They set to work in the country remedying vast inequalities between landlords and peasants and between men and women with much success from the beginning. Women had been regarded as chattels or slaves by their parents, then their spouses and finally their sons and this changed abruptly. Peasants gained equality (hundreds and thousands of the most despised landlords paid with their lives – in a short period, half of the then arable land in China was distributed directly to the poorest peasants) but soon surrendered it to the collective. Women too had some reversals in fortune. In the cities, workers ceased to be slaves of their bosses only to quickly become effectively the slaves of their workplaces. Everybody became slaves to development (except perhaps party bosses).

What was going on was that Mao began to seek only the advice of Moscow and Marx, virtually the only friends China seemed to have, and thus began to sacrifice the Yan’an spirit (for reasons I outlined in the last few posts). Who else could the Chinese trust (it seemed not even themselves)? Mao himself visited Moscow in 1950 (in his first trip ever outside China – he only ever took one other journey outside China in his eighty-two years before his death in 1976). In that trip he sealed a military and aid deal, though Mao and Stalin didn’t especially get on. He was playing the supplicating vassal in terms of the Chinese cultural tradition.

One further complication to the first years was the invasion of South Korea by the North Koreans and the subsequent Korean War. Once General Macarthur had become involved and began to insist into northern Korea, the US seemed to threaten to expand its efforts into northern China. Macarthur’s aim actually was apparently to provoke war with China and ultimately re-install the GMD on the mainland. The Chinese secretly added a quarter of a million Chinese to the forces opposed to Macarthur now in North Korea for a surprise attack. The US was, of course, forced into a retreat and ultimately a Korean armistice along the pre-war lines by this action. In the meantime, Mao had asked Chinese civilians for their financial support in the war effort and China had suffered around a million casualties all up but military success against a Superpower was a great fillip. Mao also used the situation as an excuse to clamp down on anti-revolutionary elements and encouraged informers. Thousands of people were denounced.

Mao’s China may have been a tough place to be for many but his doctor of the time, Li Zhisui, reported on Mao’s penchant for western dancing (which he organised for his associates and himself regularly) and other perks and peculiarities of being Mao. The peasants were performing their roles, however, and two thirds of them were already collectivised by the end of 1955. They were led to expect that the final abolition of private plots would improve their circumstances. Various grain and other production quotas proved a greater priority for Mao than ensuring the peasants were all adequately fed, however. Productivity had not in fact increased very much.

Artistic and other expression was strictly controlled from the beginning which made Mao’s apparently liberal call for ‘a hundred flowers to bloom’ in 1956 tempting for many formerly stifled artists and intellectuals. The outbursts of expression that followed the calls for them from the centre including Mao’s may have shocked Mao. Corruption and inefficiency had been major gripes in the period. Many criticisms of the party were tolerated but this proved a brief period of unfettered expression. Mao later claimed he had instituted the period simply to draw anti-revolutionary elements into the open so that he could punish them.

Punish many of those who had taken the CCP at its word the CCP duly did. Many were first denounced as class enemies from 1957 in the usual ‘struggle’ meetings. Ge Peiqi, an academic, was one well known example of a relatively mild criticism being radically dealt with. There were effectively ‘rightist’ quotas that had to be met in the crackdown period as leaders in workplaces that hadn’t denounced a sufficient number of ‘rightists’ were likely themselves to be denounced as ‘rightist’ by some radical or even an opportunist or perhaps a personal enemy. This new purge continued into 1958 and by the end of it nearly a million people had been denounced. The campaign had been partly motivated by anti-intellectualism per se.

On the international front Mao hosted Khrushchev in 1958 but failed to mention his intention to attack the GMD in Taiwan. Once he attacked and the US responded vigorously he backed down. In the following year he met Khrushchev again and in 1960 the Sino-Soviet split occurred. I’ll discuss much of this some more in later posts but suffice it to say Mao and the USSR never seemed to work as more than a short-term and pragmatic pseudo union of purpose. The USSR tended to seem to Mao as at least as imperialist as any other outside power. Also in 1959, Mao crushed a revolt in Tibet. The Chinese have always tended to regard Tibet as a rightful province of China but this strong action further harmed Mao’s international reputation.

Back at home, Mao, never satisfied with growth levels, prepared the ground for what he called the Great Leap Forward (GLF) in 1958. Everybody was asked to work day and night for the revolution and the slogan ‘catch the stars and moon’ was used to emphasise the need to work through the night to build China. The people were promised that they were a great people capable of the rapid growth Mao was calling for (and consequent rapid improvement in their conditions of living under Mao’s direction). Mao in turn was held in awe by his people as suggested by one anecdote of the time. It is said that he was in the country and happened to read aloud a sign that read “people’s communes are good”. This one action supposedly led to the immediate formation of many communes throughout the country as news of it travelled.

One of the more foolhardy but perhaps relatively benign projects of the period inspired by all this boosterism (aided by the stifling of any criticism wrought by the recent anti-rightist campaigns) was the attempt by cooperatives throughout the country to smelt new steel by melting down old scrap metal (that naturally turned out to be quite substandard steel). Such projects were seen as ‘real revolution’ and a thing of pride by the masses

There was worse to come. In the frantic process of attempting to increase yields, for example, many cooperatives planted crops too close together and over fertilized with the predictable end result of counterproductive waste.

Two features of the new China combined to create the calamity that was the Great Leap Forward: the competitive urge between collectives created by the boosterism and insufficient verification by the centre of truth telling in reporting of yields. The liars reported greater and greater yields and the centre relied upon those reports to squeeze further quotas. As a result there was soon mass starvation in parts of the countryside as the still actually quite inefficient farmers fed others as best they could (and better) before feeding themselves.

Mao first began to realise what was actually occurring on a visit to his home town of Shao Shan. Even so, he was still too ready to see any criticism of what had occurred even from personal friends as an act of treachery. His abject treatment of a long-time fellow Xiangtanese (Xiangtan being the Hunanese county they both hailed from) and formerly somewhat close friend as a result, Marshall Peng, after receiving his unpalatable advice is a case in point. Even someone as senior as Premier Zhou who sympathised with Peng’s view of the situation was not willing to speak out at the time for fear of the consequences of Mao’s wrath.