Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

What are the strengths and weaknesses of China's political…

- - - - Strength: capacity for mobilisation, appearance of a strong centralised and unified front, and the stability needed for long term planning
      - Weaknesses: inability to contain the personalisation of power, corruption, and the growing demands of non-state actors
  - - - in Douglass North's words, we are exploring the 'rules of the game' in China
      - Looking at rules and structures
        both formal and informal
    - - according to whom? whose interests do the political institutions serve?
      - focusing on strengths and weaknesses that have an impact on the exercise of power of the CCP
  - - - Looking at China post 1949 but with a focus on the post-reform era because it was during that time that China formalised its political institutions that impact the decisions of today
    - - Xi dismantling the institutional safeguards that were put in place, therefore raising the question of whether this signified the failure (and therefore weaknesses) or China's institutions
- - - - Lawrence & Martin (2013)
        
        'document based culture' means that official statement from the government has a bigger impact than that of an individual's
        
        Can be considered a strength because it has clear national and international impact on the appearance of the CCP as a unified front with a clear and cohesive narrative. Therefore eliminating the possibility of officials contradicting another or policies being retracted
    - - Fewsmith (2021)
        
        Attributed China's stability to it's high degree of centralisation (along with strong ideology and penetration in society)
        
        Can be considered a strength insofar as the centralisation of power enables swift decision making, which will be explored in more detail in the next paragrah
  - - - Heilman & Perry (2011)
        
        'Guerilla policy style' inherited from the Mao era
        
        Strength because this style of governance focuses on pragmatism, flexibility, and opportunism
    - - Thornton (2009)
        
        Example of SARS outbreak showing high state capacity, also evidenced more recently during the C-19 pandemic, during which field hospitals were built in a matter of days (Rippa & Oakes 2023)
        
        Could be considered a strength because the high capacity for mobilisation allows the government can change the narrative of a seemingly devastating crisis into a story of state success. Karl (2020) noted the importance of historical narratives and construction of facts in understanding China
  - - - Rithmire (2022)
        
        The degree of control that China's political institution has in its economy also means that its SOEs are able/willing to sacrifice short term goals in order to uphold long term ambitions of the state — in exchange for political goodwill
      - The willingness and ability to plan in the long term perhaps also reflected by the fact that China produces Five-Year Plans
    - - Before Xi removed term limits, Nathan (2013) noted that the different steps that China has taken to institutionalise its system (norm bound succession, meritocracy, limited and orchestrated popular participation) has given it a degree of stability
- - - - Personalisation of power (especially through the military) has been a constant from Deng to Xi
        
        Can be considered a weakness because it undermines the other institutionalisation processes that China has put in place — to the extent that Fewsmith argued that the Leninist structure of China's government and its embedded nature in society is more important than institutionalisation
  - - - China's political institution insists on a meritocratic development of government officials, but this also means that grassroots cadres will selectively implement policies that are more visible and tangible to their superiors in Beijing
        rather than ones that will benefit their direct constituencies
  - - - Because the CCP does not derive its legitimacy from the ballot boxes, it continuously needs to engage in a process of legitimation
        
        Tension between China's political institutions and economic actors, especially regarding matters of national security
        
        Pang Laikwan (2022): on the disillusionment of China's 'garlic chives'
        
        Link to cadre culture because of the institutional inability to take into account popular opinion into evaluations metric because that would grant the population more agency beyond the carefully orchestrated local participation initiatives