Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Monday, October 12, 2009

The secret of success, part 2

Not flexibility, but totalitarian power

A member of the sharing comparative group, posted this article to the group's web site. The author offers a very different explanation for the Communist Party's success in China.

If you pair this article with the one preceding it, you can ask your students to discuss (or write) about which one seems most convincing (and why, of course).

China's Political Feet of Clay

Somebody has rained on the Chinese Communist Party’s parade. In the runup to Oct. 1, the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic, China’s netizens were enthralled by a 10,000-character essay calling for political reform. As propagandists saturated the media with paeans to the country’s economic and technological achievements, this Internet manifesto lamented that “Stalinism is wreaking havoc on [China’s] political, ideological and cultural construction.”

When China’s development seems to be progressing smoothly, why should such an attack on government policy gain so many supporters? The piece has struck a chord because its critique goes to the heart of China’s political stagnation. Basic constitutional issues such as the delineation of the functions and jurisdiction of the Party, government, the legislature, the judiciary and the army remain murky, even as the economy develops at break-neck speed...

Despite all its manifold achievements, the CCP’s celebrations are overshadowed by its monumental failure to create modern institutions and political systems. Even as the leadership boasts about the “China model” or the “Beijing consensus,” the country’s fundamental political institutions are in disarray...

Given Beijing’s failure to grapple with the population’s dissatisfaction, the CCP has to rely on brute force to keep so-called “destabilizing forces” at bay. The Tiananmen Square massacre set the precedent for the CCP calling on the PLA... to defend itself against the people’s wrath. And the unprecedentedly large-scale military parade on Oct. 1 was a show of force aimed as much at the Party’s myriad domestic enemies—dissidents as well as Tibetan and Uighur “splittists”—as at China’s foreign foes...

These antediluvian systems of governance have remained frozen because the slightest change is seen as potentially subversive...

Find out What You Need to Know

Labels: China, Communist Party, political culture, politics