CCP Internal Resilience – post 10 of 10

Bonding - A conclusion

Martin Jacques wrote When China Rules the World in 2009.  His analysis ignores the potential dangers in Chinese politics.  But his observation that the western world must learn to understand how Chinese think, those rules of the cultural road that are foreign to us, is quite correct.

Concepts about survival of authoritarian regimes need to account for China as sui generis.  Modernization theory, which sees regime change in China as a logical next step in an upper middle class society, has not confronted an occupying elite like CCP anywhere else in the world. 

CCP Internal Resilience – post 9 of 10

Strength Through Struggle – Nietzsche, anyone?

Western political theorists would like to find a single theory to explain changes in authoritarian governance patterns over time.  How to explain regime longevity and collapse in Europe, in Africa, in Asia?  How to explain transitions into and out of authoritarianism?  Why do some regimes collapse and others ride out similar shocks to the system?  What makes a regime more stable?  When and how does the authority in an authoritarian regime collapse?

CCP Internal Resilience – post 8 of 10

United we stand

As David Shambaugh pointed out in China's Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation, CCP has expended great effort in analyzing the collapse of the CPSU in 1991.  The principal conclusion is that dissolution comes from dissension at the top. Xi admonished the Party in a December, 2012 speech.  Analyzing the reasons for the fall of CPSU, he saw individuals and factions vying for power, and “nobody was man enough to stand up and resist.”  Xi sees himself as the man to stand up in China now.  Loyalty to Xi is the only test of loyalty to CCP.

CCP Internal Resilience – post 7 of 10

Chinese bureaucratic stability is not western bureaucratic stability

The bureaucracy can be, should be, must be, stable even if leadership is in crisis.  What keeps midlevel bureaucrats and above from collaborating for substantial change?  After all, there are leadership crises from time to time –Bo Xilai is the best known to us, but he was no midlevel, and there have been many more, back to the time of Mao.  And Bo Xilai had loyalists in Chongqing and Dalian, but no one was volunteering to go to jail with him.

CCP Internal Resilience – post 6 of 10

Decentralization and family first

Sometimes, we think of CCP governance as Xi Jinping sitting in Zhongnanhai, pushing buttons, and everyone jumps. That may be true now to some extent, but more generally, Chinese governance is highly decentralized.  A mayor owes more direct allegiance to the city Party leader, and perhaps one or two people at the provincial level, than to Xi Jinping directly.  Of course, the obligations extend all the way up and you don't want your own leader to lose face.

CCP Internal Resilience – post 5 of 10

Organization Department - Vetting and Evaluation

The vetting process for moving up in the hierarchy is serious and it is constant.  At a certain level of middle management, the Central Organization Department (zhongzubu) controls promotions and lateral moves and arranges annual progress reviews.  The Central Organization Department controls the top 5000 or so positions within CCP, and provincial and local organization bureaus control thousands more.  Someone is always watching, and the watching is everywhere.