19

China’s Political Reforms:

A Net Assessment

By KENNETH LIEBERTHAL

Kenneth Lieberthal is professor of political science and research associate at the Centerfor Chinese Studies of the University of Michigan. Hefrequently visits the People’s Republicof China and has written many books, monographs, and articles on China’sforeign policy,national and local politics, and decision making. He consults for the Department of State andvarious other organizations. Professor Lieberthal formerly taught at Swarthmore Collegeand served on the social science staff of the Rand Corporation.

ABSTRACT: China’s leaders since the death of Mao Zedong have tried toreform the political system so as to reduce the level of political coercion,increase the use of rational/legal processes, put talented individuals intoresponsible positions, enhance their capacity to base decisions on pragmaticcriteria, and restore and strengthen the legitimacy of the polity. Theirefforts to further these goals have produced important results, but thereforms still have not taken root. The reforms have been hedged in byfundamental untouchables, resisted by uncooperative cadres, and undercutby the inherent incompatibility of different components of the reformpackage itself. The prognosis for the various elements of the reform effortdepends both on keeping the initiative in the hands of the reformers at thetop of the Communist party and on achieving good results in the economicarena.

20

T HE Chinese have been trying toJL revamp their political systemsince 1977. Like related efforts in

economics,’ these political changes are areaction to the enormous problems thatMao Zedong bequeathed his successorswhen he died in 1976.

Mao’s gargantuan attempt in his lastdecade to steer China away from a&dquo;revisionist&dquo; course left a politicalshambles. The Cultural Revolution’s

encouragement of mass violence andfactional conflict produced a radical de-institutionalization of the politicalsystem. Bureaucratic information chan-nels became blocked or seriously dis-torted. Factional conflict affected both

personnel appointments and policyoutcomes. Political coercion within the

governing bodies and toward thepopulace reached extraordinarily highlevels. Fundamental disagreementsdivided even the highest-level leadersover such basic issues as the rules bywhich the system should be governed.The leadership’s capacity to acquiregood information, to base decisions onthe substantive merits of issues, to havethose decisions implemented in a

prudent and conscientious way, and toelicit support from the population forthis entire process had all seriouslyeroded between 1966 and 1976.

REFORM GOALS AND

INITIATIVES

In response to this situation, DengXiaoping and his colleagues launched awide-ranging series of efforts to reformthe political system. In broad terms,

their policies seek to achieve the fol-lowing goals:

--to reduce the level of politicalcoercion throughout the system;

-40 reduce the salience of patron-client relations, of factionalism,and of corruption while expandingthe role of rational/ legal processesin the polity and bringing into

power successors with functional

expertise;--to enhance the capacity of the

political organs to reach decisionsbased on pragmatic criteria; and

-to restore and strengthen the legit-imacy of the polity.

The resulting political system will ideallybe more capable of managing a wrench-ing evolution into modernity whilemaintaining the country’s politicalstability. In more detail, the followingreform initiatives have been taken todate.

Reducing coercion

There has been much attentiondevoted in the Western media to thevicissitudes of China’s policy towardintellectual freedom. The &dquo;anti-pollu-tion&dquo; campaign that flared up in the fallof 1983 raised the specter both domes-

tically and abroad of another bout ofradical know-nothingism. Although theline that defines the politically permis-sible continues to shift erratically, twobasic changes have, on balance, madeChina significantly less coercive.

First, political labels on individualshave been removed step by step. Chinaas of 1976 practiced severe discriminationagainst large groups of people basedsolely on political criteria. To have a badlabel-as a landlord, capitalist, rightist,

1. Good overviews of the economic reform

effort and its results are available in, for example,the symposium published in the China BusinessReview, pp. 8-27 (Nov.-Dec. 1983).

21

bad element, and so forth-severelylimited one’s opportunities for employ-ment, marriage, and perhaps evenfreedom. This system has in the mainbeen dismantled since 1978.

Virtually all of the approximately150,000 remaining rightists have beenrestored to full citizenship. Landlordsand capitalists have generally been pro-claimed to be peasants and workers nowthat they have &dquo;adequately reformed.&dquo;About 2.9 million Party members whowere judged to be counterrevolutionariesduring the Cultural Revolution haveformally been rehabilitated. And count-less thousands-indeed, probablymillions-of others who bore one stig-matizing label or another have receivedrelief via the efforts to redress pastmistakes . 2

The formal declaration that class

struggle and political campaigns wouldno longer be the driving forces ofChina’s revolution gave doctrinal under-

pinning to this substantial decline in theranks of the pariah groups. Campaignsand struggles in the past had sometimesappeared from afar to involve fairlyhigh-minded attempts to raise the pop-ulace to new levels of political purity.But in China the police and the laborcamps were two of the key instrumentsof these so-called consciousness-raisingefforts.

Second, the decline in coercion hasbeen manifested in genuine encourage-ment of discussion and debate.

During Mao’s last decade, even topleaders found that almost anything theysaid might well be regarded primarily asan indicator of their political orthodoxy-

at a time when unorthodox thoughtsbrought disaster. Since 1978, however, awide range of views is solicited on manyproblems-although not on fundamen-tal goals and priorities. Ministerial

journals, technical periodicals, thegeneral media, and private conversa-tions are often spiced with relativelyclear advocacy of competing positions.The reduction in political coercion, inshort, has permitted a very substantialimprovement in the quality of discourseon public policy.

Rational/legal processesand the succession

Much of the effort since 1978 hasaimed at re-institutionalizing the polityand, relatedly, at putting people oftalent in leadership positions so thesestrengthened institutions will producegood outcomes. As the Cultural Revo-lution undermined standard operatingprocedures and immersed individuals ina terror-filled environment, patron-clientties emerged as the major way toaccomplish tasks and get ahead. Factionsbased on personal loyalties that ex-

tended across formal institutional boun-daries became key combatants for thespoils of the political system. Thesefactional ties were nurtured by exchang-ing favors that ranged from personnelappointments to procurement of scarceresources, provision of political supportor protection, and other similar prac-tices. In short, corruption based onpolitical power became a defining char-acteristic of China’s politics.’

This insidious development hadmany unhealthy ramifications for the

2. Richard Krauss analyzes this system ofpolitical labels in his Class and Class Conflict inChinese Socialism (New York: Columbia Univer-sity Press, 1981).

3. On Chinese factions, see, for example,Lucian Pye, The Dynamics of Chinese Politics(Cambridge, MA: Oelgeschlager, Gunn & Hain,1981).

22

political system. It became very difficultto place the best-qualified people in

executive positions because these posi-tions were seen as part of the spoils offactional fighting. Rules on the booksmight affect forms and appearances, butthey proved relatively weak in structuringactual behavior. Political discipline andthe prestige of the political apparatusamong the populace naturally sufferedaccordingly. Some political science liter-ature notes that a little corruption canhave beneficent effects on the politics ofa developing country,4 but the corrup-tion in China grew to such an extent thatit considerably harmed the polity.

Sharp divisions over substantiveissues exacerbated the effects of corrup-tion, as corrupt relationships shieldedindividuals who opposed and sabotagedcurrent policy.’ This lingering phenom-enon still endangers the political andeconomic reforms because foot draggingby opponents makes it more difficult toproduce the promised improvements instandards of living and personal security.

The pervasiveness and complexity ofthe intertwined problems of patron-client relations, factionalism and cor-

ruption sparked an appropriately wide-ranging mix of measures to improve thesituation. At the end of 1978 the Partydecided to estabish a hierarchy ofDiscipline Inspection Commissions toinvestigate and root out corruption andviolations of rules within the Party. Thenew Party constitution, adopted in

1982, considerably stiffened the rules formembership and training. These mea-

sures were preparatory to the projectedthree-year Party rectification campaignthat began in the winter of 1983-84. Thiscampaign is supposed to be aimed es-pecially at identifying and removingthose Party members who still support amore leftist position than current policydictates. The campaign is also intendedto instill appropriate norms in the Partycadre.

Beyond the use of disciplinary bodiesand related measures, a range of addi-tional initiatives aims at buttressing therational/legal elements in determiningpersonnel appointments and policy out-comes. For example, elections in whichcandidates exceed posts have been heldfor key government positions up to thelevel of the county. These can be-andhave been-manipulated by the author-ities, but they have also to some limitedextent reduced the ability of individualsto use political appointments as a way tobuild factional support. Within boththe Party and the government, more-over, the personnel rules are beingchanged so as to try to encourage theappointment of younger and better-

educated people to executive positions.A related initiative aims at reducing

dramatically the multiple hat wearing ofoffice holders. Before 1978 it wascommon for a high-ranking Partyofficial, for example, to hold a corre-sponding executive position in the gov-ernment and/ or the military. This notonly overly concentrated power; it alsoenhanced the potential for factionaldomination of individual offices and

units, as one key person and his4. See, for example, Samuel Huntington,

Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven,CT: Yale University Press, 1968), pp. 59-71.

5. This is confirmed, for example, by theCommentator article in People’s Daily, 14 Feb.1984, trans. in Daily Report: People’s Republic ofChina, 15 Feb. 1984, pp. K1-3.

6. Barrett McCormick, of the University ofWashington, provides a good analysis of this

problem in his "Leninist Implementation: TheElection Campaign," in Policy Implementation inPost-Mao China, ed. David M. Lampton (n.p.,forthcoming).

23

followers could monopolize all the corepositions. Between 1978 and 1983, in atleast the most highly visible leadershippositions down to the county level, thisphenomenon was nearly abolished.

Personnel changes have aimed at

more than reducing multiple hat wearingand breaking up factions. During theCultural Revolution China recruitedabout 18 million new members into the

Party, and many of these obtainedofficial posts. After the Cultural Revo-

lution, as already noted, about 3 millionformer officials were brought back topower. The new reform initiatives,however, required that many of the

people from both these groups beremoved-the former because theyopposed current policy and the latterbecause they had become too old andlacked requisite skills. The attempts toremove these individuals have beencombined with related efforts to slimdown and rationalize the country’s po-litical institutions.

The numbers reflect the effects ofthese efforts. During 1983 about 70

percent of the 1400 provincial-levelrehabilitees were removed and were

replaced by a smaller number of better-educated officials. Overall, the numberof provincial Party secretaries hasdropped from 300 to 150, and the aver-age age of these incumbents has declinedfrom 63 to 56 years old. The percentwith some college education has risenfrom 10 to 40 percent. Comparablechanges have occured in the highestpositions in the State Council. Com-parable figures are lacking, however, onthe mass of cadres below the top leader-ship positions at each level of thenational hierarchy.

The reduction in multiple hat wearingand the replacement of older cadres byyounger and better-educated counter-

parts is supposed to occur as much at thepeak of the polity-in the politburo andits related organs-as in other units.

China’s media constantly tout the needto rejuvenate the leading organs andpass leadership on to a second and thirdgeneration. The object is both to avoidanother debilitating succession struggleand to guide the country to modern-ization with technically qualified peoplein place of the old generals who survivefrom the early days of the revolution.

Enhancing decision-makingcapacities

Ever since Deng Xiaoping in the

spring of 1978 declared that China must&dquo;seek truth from facts and make practicethe sole criterion of truth,&dquo; the author-ities have taken many measures to

improve the political system’s capacityto make pragmatic decisions. The pre-viously noted increased freedom oflower-ranking cadres to state their viewshas itself contributed significantly to amore pragmatic decision-making style.But the efforts in this sphere have gonewell beyond loosening the ideologicalstraitjacket.

Several bureaucratic initiatives meritattention. There is a renewed stress on

rationally allocating responsibilityamong members of the Party and gov-ernment committees; the head of eachcommittee is now prohibited fromsimply imposing his views on themembers. In addition, decision makinghas been somewhat decentralized.

Many decisions previously had to bemade by the central organs in Beijing,even though these organs lacked ade-quate information and cooperated onlyvery poorly with each other. Now, bycontrast, some of these decisions aremade by lower-level, territorial Party

24

and government committees that are

close to the problems and better situatedto coordinate the efforts of the relevantlocal specialized agencies.

Educated individuals are also beingbrought into executive positions. Manyof those with a higher education whohad been purged and vilified duringMao’s last years have now been givenresponsible positions. As political agen-cies develop leading groups that are

more educationally competent, the useof hard data as an element in decision

making should increase.There is also a more systematic effort

to gather and disseminate pertinent data.The state statistical system was reducedto bureaucratic rubble during the Cul-tural Revolution. Substantial effortshave been made since the late 1970s to

resuscitate this system and to increase its

ability to withstand political pressures.7 7Numerous new publications, moreover,are transmitting the fruits of this andrelated data-gathering efforts to inter-ested parties throughout the polity.

None of the foregoing measures is apanacea. All, though, contribute to thesystem’s ability to reach good decisionsand to respond quickly to changingcircumstances.

Restoring andstrengthening legitimacy

Most reform initiatives help mitigatethe crisis of legitimacy-or what theChinese refer to as the crisis of confi-

dence-that the system suffered by thelate 1970s. Some measures, of course,have had a double edge, in that they

actually decrease the legitimacy of thesystem for those individuals who rose

rapidly when other priorities obtainedduring the Cultural Revolution. Onbalance, though, a more pragmatic, effi-cient, rational/legal, and less coerciveregime is likely to win some favor frommost Chinese, especially after the tur-moil of the past.

But the hangover after the CulturalRevolution binge has proven prolongedand painful; millions of youths, especially,are severely disillusioned. Corruptionand patriarchal behavior have raised

charges about a new class of bureau-crats, while increased exposure to theoutside world has created a revolutionof rising material expectations. Modern-ization is itself a profoundly unsettlingtransition, no less in China than else-where.

Some reform policies seek specificallyto cope with the legitimacy issue. Manyof these have been economic, as theability to deliver a rising standard ofliving has explicitly become one basis ofthe Chinese Communist party’s rationalefor governing. But other measures havebeen political. These include the newelection system up to the county level,mentioned earlier; strengthening thegovernmental representative bodies-the People’s Congresses-and the var-ious united front organizations; and theattacks on corruption by the DisciplineInspection Commissions.On a broader level, the leaders are

seeking a balance between greaterfreedom of thought and the promotion

7. At the height of the Cultural Revolution,the State Statistical Bureau had only 14 people leftin its central office. On the rehabilitated statistical

system, see the series of articles in Daily Report:People’s Republic of China, 17 Feb. 1984, pp.K17-21.

8. See, for example, the speech given byGeneral Secretary Hu Yaobang on a tour ofSichuan and Guizhou Provinces, where he said,"What do the people want the Communist Partyto do? First, to gain liberation. Second, to getrich." Sichuan Radio, 8 Feb. 1984, trans. in DailyReport: People’s Republic of China, 9 Feb. 1984,p. K11.

25

of an ideological orthodoxy to legitimizethe system. The new orthodoxy is anuneasy amalgam of several elements:those parts of Mao Zedong’s legacy thatare most compatible with current policy;the Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping,9which gives definition to the new polit-ical priorities; and broad appeals basedon the patriotic bonds that are supposedto unite all Chinese.

OBSTACLES TO REFORM

The efforts to reform the politicalsystem are wide ranging. Nevertheless,the reforms have been hedged in byfundamental untouchables, resisted byuncooperative cadres, and undercut bythe very incompatibility of differentelements in the reform package. Whilesignificant reforms have nevertheless

taken hold, it is important to under-stand the factors that have limited-and

will continue to circumscribe-theresults of these initiatives.

First, there are sharp conceptuallimits to the scope of the reforms. Even

the leading reformers are basically stillLeninists and will not tolerate a shift

away from a patriarchal system towarda fundamentally more democratic andrational/ legal polity.’° Deng Xiaoping’s&dquo;four basic principles&dquo; highlight this fact.They demand that the Communist partyremain the sole leading party in China;that Marxism-Leninism-Mao ZedongThought-including the &dquo;enrichment&dquo;

of the latter by Deng and other topleaders-remain the sole permissible

ideological system; that the socialist

path remain the sole legitimate path thecountry can follow; and that the

people’s democratic dictatorship remainthe country’s state system for the indef-inite future.

These principles have themselves beensubject to varying interpretations onspecifics-for example, as to what, con-cretely, defines &dquo;the socialist path&dquo;-butthey are in their entire thrust profoundlyrestrictive. The Communist Party willmonopolize political power, but the

Party in turn must be disciplined and ledfrom the top down. While &dquo;practice isthe sole criterion of truth&dquo; on concreteand limited matters, all fundamentaltruths must derive from, or at least bemade compatible with, Marxism-Len-inism-Mao Zedong Thought. Althougheconomic reforms may permit foreigndirect investment in China, de factodecollectivization of agriculture, andthe encouragement of small-scale privateindustry, the bulk of the industrial,finance, and trade systems must remainpublicly owned and operated. And thepeople’s democratic dictatorship is a

state form designed to oppress thosewho disagree over fundamentals.

This broad approach clearly pene-trates into how the leaders think about

everyday problems. For almost everyissue, the path to improvement is still

proclaimed to lie in having the leaders ateach level properly understand theproblem, commit themselves to it, andpay attention to it until it is solved. The

key, in current Chinese thinking, thusremains always with the leaders, notwith any autonomous bodies or staff.

Fundamentally, also, career successhas continued to go primarily to thosewho carefully cultivate a bureaucraticbase and then nurture that base as they

9. There have also been related publicationsof the selected works of Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai,and Chen Yun.

10. These leaders are also influenced byChina’s long tradition of statecraft, which islikewise profoundly nondemocratic.

26

progress up the system.&dquo; This basic

pattern of career mobility naturallystrengthens the grip of patron-clientrelations on the polity and inhibits theselection of leading officials solely onthe basis of talent.

Conceptually, in brief, the politicalreforms are the brain children of indi-viduals who themselves are very much

products of the Chinese system. Whilemuch significant tinkering may go on,therefore, more radical changes such asthe creation of a truly multiparty systemare not in the offing.

In the rough and tumble of Chinesepolitics, also, the reforms must contendwith significant opposition. In some

cases, those in charge of some specificreform are also the targets of that sameinitiative. This has been very much thecase with local cadres who must overseethe nomination and election process tofill the offices that they themselves hold.Similarly, the Discipline InspectionCommissions were initially put underthe leadership of the Party committee attheir own bureaucratic level. But the

primary targets of the Discipline Inspec-tion Commissions were to be the veryParty committees-and their subordi-nate organs-that had charge of them! &dquo;The current three-year Party-rectifica-tion campaign suffers from the sameproblem, and these examples could bemultiplied many times over. They reflectthe tensions inherent in trying to pre-

serve a patriarchal system while at thesame time reforming it.

Balancing the political parts

The reform effort also presumes an

altered balance among the basic terri-

torial and bureaucratic building blocksof the Chinese system in a way thatinvites attempts from the losers toredress the balance. Territorially, thereforms-economic as well as political-should shift power and resources towardthe coastal cities and away from theheartland. Bureaucratically, the reformshave important implications for the fivebasic building blocks of the system:economics, culture-propaganda, secu-rity, personnel, and the hierarchy of firstsecretaries of Party committees.

The economic bureaucracies are in

charge of economic management andgrowth. Reform for them means en-hancing efficiency and achieving a newsectoral balance that gives lower pri-ority to development of the producer-goods industries. The cultural bureau-cracies, by contrast, have responsibilityfor maintaining a political esprit whileadapting to the demands of the economicdevelopment program. The reform

program has given the cultural bureau-cracies the twin tasks of freeing scientificand technological research from politicalconstraints while bolstering a commit-ment to socialism and a spirit of

patriotism throughout the populace.The security bureaucracies cover

everything from crime and fire fightingto political dissidence, counterespionage,and national defense. Reform to themmeans increasing adherence to law,lightening political repression, limitingforeign subversion, and modernizingthe People’s Liberation Army. The per-

11. This is the major lesson to be drawn fromDavid M. Lampton’s careful study of the careersof six major Chinese officials: Paths to Power:Elite Mobility in Contemporary China (Ann Arbor,MI: Michigan China Center, forthcoming).

12. See Lawrence Sullivan, "The Role of theControl Organs in the Chinese Communist Party,1978-1982" (Paper delivered at the Conference ofthe New York State Political Science Association,1983).

27

sonnel bureaucracies control careers

through the maintenance of personaldossiers and control over employmentand promotion. While personnel unitsare embedded in economic enterprisesand other organs, they in fact have theirown sets of regulations independent ofthe host organs. Under the reform pro-gram, the personnel bureaucracies shouldcultivate and promote younger andbetter-educated individuals and weedout former leftists still in responsiblepositions.

Finally, the hierarchy of secretarieswho lead the territorial Party committeesreached a high point of power andinfluence as of the mid-1970s, when itwas said that the &dquo;Party takes commandof everything.&dquo; The reforms, however,have forced these top Party executivesto give up their concurrent posts in thegovernment and/ or military hierarchies.In addition, the watchword of the 1980sis to pull the Party out of detaileddecision making in favor of having itconcentrate on more general politicaltasks.

The reform program has thus had a

complex effect on each of these bureau-cracies. Some generalizations are, never-theless, possible. First, the economicbureaucracies have to date gained themost, overall, from the program. Theyhave greatly enhanced their control overeconomic decision making, allowing farless intrusion by the Communist Partythan had previously been the case.

The power of the cultural-propagandabureaucracies, by contrast, has been cutback. The reform program has playeddown the role of politics, when theraison d itre of these bureaucracies pre-viously was to enforce political ortho-doxy. Extensive contacts with overseasChinese and with foreigners have simply

made the task of these bureaucraciesmore complex and difficult.The security bureaucracies are in

some ways in an even worse position.With the 2.9 million rehabilitations

following the Cultural Revolution,numerous cadres who had been detainedand abused by the security organsreturned to positions of power. In addi-tion, power within the security bureau-cracies has now been divided somewhat.With the great increase in China’s con-tacts abroad, moreover, the tasks ofthese bureaucracies have also become

vastly more complex.The military side of the security

system has also had a mixed time withthe reforms. Reportedly, high-rankingofficers have been disgruntled over thedenigration of Mao, have bridled at thegreater political and cultural freedomallowed, and have chafed under the tightdefense budgets that have accompaniedthe relegation of defense to fourthpriority among the four modernizations.

The personnel system has been put incharge of cultivating and bringing intopower a younger generation of better-educated cadres. Numerous reportsindicate, however, that this bureaucracyhad become a real stronghold of theleftists by the end of the Cultural Revo-lution.

Finally, as noted earlier, the leadingsecretaries in the territorial Party com-mittees have had to yield both con-current political positions and muchdecision-making authority.

The economic bureaucracies thushave clearly fared better than the cul-tural, security, personnel, and Partysecretarial systems under the reforms. Inthe past, though, these other bureau-cracies have time and again proven ableto assert their interests vis-a-vis the

28

economic organs. It will still be some

years before a stable balance is struck

among these sectors.’3There are, finally, structural contra-

dictions among the various elements in

the political reform effort itself. For

example, initiatives have been taken todisperse and institutionalize authority.In Beijing, therefore, there is no longer acult of personality that permits oneindividual to be the unquestioned ar-biter of major policies. The position ofParty chairman has been abolished, andfour major organs-the politburo, StateCouncil, Secretariat, and Central Ad-visory Commission-make policy;whereas in Mao’s last years only the firsttwo existed.&dquo; The degree of overlap ofoffice holding has also diminished con-siderably. And the determination to

prevent ruinous factional struggles andpolarization of politics has meant thatconstant efforts have been made tofashion a consensus on issues in con-

tention. 15The dispersion and only partial insti-

tutionalization of authority and thestress on consensus, while central com-

ponents of the reform effort, also havethe effect of attenuating other dimen-sions of that effort. Far-reaching changerequires the centralization of authorityin the hands of a reform group so that-it

can keep the effort on track even whenthe reforms are still too new and untriedto produce the promised results. Thenotion of radical change in a patriarchalsystem simply does not conform easilyto the political preference for seekingand maintaining a consensus amongdecision makers.

A NET ASSESSMENT

It is simply inappropriate to proclaimthe success or failure of China’s post-Mao political reforms. It is possible,though, to indicate to what extentvarious important dimensions of thesystem have changed. Even this effortinevitably requires drawing conclusionswhere some data are either impression-istic or inconclusive. On balance, then,to what extent have real reforms takenhold in the Chinese polity since the

death of Mao?There has been a real and marked

reduction in the level of politicalcoercion. The state has essentially de-clared that a considerably narrowerband of thought and activity should bedeemed political in the sense that thestate should monitor and control it.China has, in this sense, become far lessa totalitarian society, although it remainshighly authoritarian.&dquo;

Several concrete changes that are

part of the reform effort have takenhold. There has been a substantial

change in the people who hold positionsat the vice-ministerial level and above in

Beijing, at the vice-governor level andabove in the provinces, and at the vice-magistrate level and above in the coun-ties, with for the most part comparable

13. This analysis draws from Kenneth Lieber-thal, "Reform Politics," China Business Review10(6):10-12 (Nov.-Dec. 1983).

14. Of these four, the Central Advisory Com-mission is clearly the least powerful. Nevertheless,it does to some extent further disperse authority atthe apex of the Chinese system.

15. For an excellent discussion of consensus

and reform, see Christopher M. Clarke, "Changingthe Context for Policy Implementation: Organ-izational and Personnel Reform in Post-Mao

China," in Policy Implementation in Post-MaoChina, ed. Lampton; and David M. Lampton,"Water: Challenge to a Fragmented Political

System," in ibid.

16. See Michel Oksenberg and Richard Bush,"China, 1972-1982: From Revolution to Reform,"Problems of Communism (Sept. 1982).

29

changes occurring in the correspondingpositions in the Party apparatus. Grossstatistics, as noted previously, reveal

that the new incumbents are generallyyounger and better educated and thatthe instances of multiple hat wearinghave declined dramatically.

While these measures appear impres-sive, it is hard to gauge their real impact.New leaders appointed to provincialposts, for example, typically must workwith an apparatus that remains loyal totheir predecessors, who, more oftenthan not, remain on the scene in somehonorific post. Patterns of personalinteraction will change only slowly, andin many cases clear institutional boun-

daries have yet to be drawn. China thusremains very much in a transitional

stage, where some of the critical

building blocks of a reformed polityhave been put into place, but where theyhave not yet taken root. Current policieswill have to be maintained for some

years with constant attention devoted to

making the reforms take hold beforeone can have real confidence in the

permanence of the reform initiatives.This issue of policy continuity focuses

attention on the apex of the politicalsystem-the Party politburo and itsrelated organs. While Deng Xiaopinghas tried hard to put into place capablesuccessors such as Hu Yaobang, ZhaoZiyang, Yao Yilin, and Wan Li, onbalance what is impressive is the degreeto which the old generals and agedrevolutionaries still cling to power. Themost powerful men currently, in termsof setting the broad outlines of policy,include Deng himself, who is 79 yearsold; Chen Yun, 79; Peng Zhen, 82; LiXiannian, 78; and Ye Jianying, 86. Theorder in which these men leave the

political stage can affect the thrust of thepolitical-reform effort.

Nor is age a problem only at this

highest level of decision making. HuYaobang is 69 and Zhao Ziyang is 66.The other sixteen members of the polit-buro average 73 years old; only four ofthem are under 70. Of the nine membersof the Secretariat, eight are 68 to 71years old. And the five leading membersof the Military Affairs Commissionaverage 82.5 years old; at 79, Deng is theyoungest of them. When one considersthat the Central Advisory Committeewas to be the body to which olderleaders would retire with honor, the

problem with removing aged peoplefrom power stands out in even bolder

relief.

Fundamentally, moreover, individ-uals remain more important than insti-tutions in China, and the promulgationof new laws and administrative decrees

alone will not change this in any seriousway. To alter this situation substantiallywould require a very basic change inboth ideology and psychology.

The question of legitimacy remainsanother difficult issue.&dquo; The reformersare trying to walk what may be a verythin line. They are pursuing a programthat should encourage the developmentof pluralistic forces and have decried thekind of political fanaticism that charac-terized the Cultural Revolution era. But

they are still determined to maintain apatriarchal system, where some com-bination of patriotism, commitment tosocialism, material satisfaction, and fearof social instability binds the populaceto the polity and legitimizes the system.Legitimacy is hard to measure, more-over, because no methodologically rigor-

17. Frederick Teiwes has wrestled with the

legitimacy issue in his Leadership, Legitimacy,and Conflict in China (Armonk, NY: M. E.

Sharpe, 1984), esp. pts. 2 and 3.

30

ous opinion surveys have been done.Also, the degree to which the currentsystem enjoys legitimacy inevitablyvaries greatly among different popula-tion sectors.

Many peasants have benefited enor-mously in material terms from therecent reforms; former Red Guards, bycontrast, have generally been shuntedaside to make way for the better-educated

younger generation. To the extent thatproposed changes in labor policy areactually implemented, ambitious workerswill benefit while others will lose the

greatest benefit that the system had

given them-total job security. The legit-imacy of the system is unlikely to in-crease for these latter individuals.Numerous additional obstacles to en-

hancing the overall legitimacy of thesystem loom on the political horizon.Challenges will arise from the continuingexposure to foreign accomplishments,from increasing inequality in the distri-bution of domestic resources, from theinevitable tensions of the transition to

*

an industrial society, and from myriadother sources.

Since 1977 China’s leaders have

proven willing to test an impressiverange of political reform measures to tryto cope with the new challenges con-fronting the largest polity in the world.This task is so daunting and complexthat there is no way at this point tospecify the degree to which each of thesereform initiatives will succeed. Clearly,much will depend on the smoothness ofthe succession at the top during thecoming years. Economic performancewill also greatly affect the support thatcurrent policies engender, both amongthe populace and within the elite. Onbalance, the political reforms have notproceeded nearly as far as have theirmuch heralded economic counterparts.In the future, political rejuvenation willlikely continue to trail behind economicchange, and the tensions between thetwo may at some point emerge as thecentral issue confronting the People’sRepublic of China.

* *

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Q (Ralph Goldberg, University of theDistrict of Columbia): What is the

present strength of regional influencesin China, and how do such influenceseither help or hinder any of the efforts atcentral reform?

A: I believe that the current reformeffort will, if it is carried through, signif-icantly enhance regional inequality inChina. The regions that will growrapidly and that will become majoreconomic forces throughout Asia areSoutheast China, especially GuangdongProvince, stretching into Guangxi,which will be primarily energy related;the eastern end of the Yangtze from

Shanghai up to Nanjing and perhaps asfar as Wuhan, which will be the center ofChina’s entrepreneurial skills; and thenthe northern region around Beijing andsouthern Manchuria, which will be aheavy industrial base and also obviouslythe bureaucratic center.

People who currently staff leadingorgans in China in general come notfrom these regions but from the interior.There is a question of whether, over thelonger run, the gradual redistribution ofresources in the country will be sus-tained by a central leadership thatlargely hails from the areas that will belosing out in relative terms. I have asked

31

some Chinese about this and one of the

comments that I have heard is that, if thecurrent reforms continue, over time wewill see more and more people from theeastern regions moved into the toppositions, because they are the techno-crats in the bureaucracies in central

ministries. These technocrats will beable to sustain this type of growingregional inequality.COMMENT (Lee): One way the

Chinese are going to deal with thatproblem is to centralize the party or

parties so that the top level will maintaintight political authority over the pro-vincial party, while at the same time

allowing the decentralization of theoperation of the government.

Q (Dr. Stikliorius, Wallingford,Pennsylvania): The reforms occurringin China do not change the fact that thegovernment there is a brutal Communist

dictatorship that has murdered millionsmore people than even Hitler and Stalin.The human-rights record of the Chineseregime is atrocious. We frequentlycondemn the Republic of South Africafor its bad record. Therefore, should wealso boycott Communist China, or isour greed for profits from the Chinesemarket so big that we forget about thebeautiful principles of human rights?

A: I would agree that the human-

rights record has been pretty bad andthat during the height of the CulturalRevolution and at the height of earliercampaigns in China, it reached trulydramatic proportions. It is also impor-tant to understand that that record has

improved a great deal since the CulturalRevolution.

The United States is always caught,to a degree, in a dilemma when it dealswith governments that do not have our

political system and that do not respect

human rights to the degree we do; andthese are the vast majority of govern-ments of the world, as you well know.

The question is, How much can beaccomplished by condemning thosegovernments and using U.S. publicresources to try to isolate them in theworld arena, versus trying to work withthose governments and potentially insome indirect and obviously limited wayimproving the chances of a more tol-erant political system? I think that in theChinese case we have opted for thelatter. My own sense is that that is amore productive approach, and there-fore it is one I would support. I do notthink that we should totally neglecthuman rights in China. If repressionwere to increase again, I think we shouldcertainly take note of that and makerepresentations privately to the Chineseabout it. But I believe that the publiccondemnation should be done by pri-vate groups. On a government-to-gov-ernment level, all sides, including theChinese people, are better served by acooperative, reasonable, and non-vitu-perative bilateral relationship.

Q (Stikliorius): The Chinese Com-munists are friendly to us because theyare eager to get our advanced technol-

ogy, nuclear plants, computers, and soon. What assurances do we have that

they, after having received all our mostadvanced technology, will not turn backto their old friends in Moscow?

A: I think the simple answer is wehave no assurances. We have no credibleassurances in part because the currentleaders will not still be on the politicalstage 20 or so years from now, which isthe period that you are looking at. Ithink instead what we have to askourselves is, What kind of China do we

32

want to see 20 years from now, and how

do we want to position ourselves withrelation to that country. What I fear,frankly, over the next 20 years is not somuch a strong China, allied with theSoviet Union, as a weak China thatinvites aggression from the SovietUnion. I think that will be highly desta-bilizing, and that is a concern that I

think should be high on our politicalagenda.

I suspect that 20 years from now, ifChina’s modernization proceeds in a

reasonably smooth and consistent way,that it will be a country that we finduncomfortable to deal with. It will bemore assertive in the international

arena, and it will still have values and

priorities that are not totally in line withour own. But I do not see any reason for

assuming that the Soviets will be anymore comfortable with the Chinese orthat Soviet and Chinese values will be

any closer than our values are to eitherof theirs.

You are dealing with different cul-tures, with significantly different polit-ical systems. They share a long border,and I do not think that that is a situationthat will be conducive to future close

cooperation or future alliance simplybecause the Chinese have managed todevelop their economy with reasonablespeed and efficiency.

Q (Marc Blecher, Oberlin College,Ohio): How would one characterize theMaoist system in terms of combinationsof patron-client, patriarchal, bureau-

cratic, totalitarian, and authoritarianelements?A (Lee): I have been trying to avoid

using any particular labels for the Maoistsystem and the political system thatexisted in China after the Cultural

Revolution up to the fall of the Gang ofFour. My feeling is that that was a

transitional period where the powerbalance among the factions characterizedthe system. No faction was in a dom-inant position to impose one ideologicalview.COMMENT (Lieberthal): Let me just

draw a couple of distinctions around theterms that you used, Marc. I referred toChina as a patriarchal society. By that Idid not mean patron-client. To me apatriarchal society is one in which thetop leadership presumes that it essentiallymonopolizes the wisdom on what poli-cies are correct. Decisions thereforeflow downward, rather than beingdeveloped by a range of reasonablyautonomous bodies that compete witheach other in some way. In that sense Ithink China under Mao was patriarchal.China under Deng Xiaoping is, I think,equally patriarchal in that fundamentalway. I also noted that China under Maowas totalitarian. In fact, in a strict sense,there are all kinds of problems with thatclassification, but in relative terms,&dquo;totalitarian&dquo; to me means that a societyhas an extremely wide range of thingsconsidered to be political. In other

words, the boundary between politicsand society is not strong; politicspervades almost everything. And while,as all China specialists know, those

boundaries shifted at different timesunder Mao, fundamentally China was asociety in which an extraordinarily widerange of things was considered political.I think that has changed very substan-tially since Mao died; and China is nowa more authoritarian society, in whichessentially there are a lot of things thatthe state really does not care about. If aperson wants to raise canaries and walk

along the street with them, that is not apolitical statement. If a scientist wants

33

to advocate a particular theory in

nuclear physics, that is not a politicalstatement. Those things were politicalbefore.The patron-client ties, I think,

became important because under Maothere was a de-institutionalization of the

system. While the level of politicalcoercion was high during the CulturalRevolution, it was not monopolized andinstitutionalized, but rather was diffusedwithin the society. As normal politicalinstitutions broke down, bureaucratic

ways of accomplishing things ceased tobe effective, and old personal ties

became increasingly important forgetting things done. It is those patron-client ties that I am talking about.

The current trend is toward a re-

institutionalization of the system and areaffirmation of bureaucratic approachesto accomplishing things. In a top-downsystem, though, it is difficult to makefundamental progress in that. Once youhave a highly faction-ridden system, it isdifficult to rout it out. To the extent that

it is routed out, there will be an in-

creasing importance of bureaucraticpluralism in the politics of the People’sRepublic of China.

Q (Lynn White, Princeton University,New Jersey): Are the reforms that aredescribed really consistent? Are theylogically unified? They seem to be areaction to the Cultural Revolution, butthe Cultural Revolution might have twovery different lessons. From the lessonof its chaos, a Chinese might think there

should now be more centralization,more law and order, more economiccontrol. From a lesson of its intolerance,though, and its lack of diversity, theexact opposite conclusions might bedrawn-that there should be more plu-ralism, more participation, more gather-ing of information from all sorts of

people.Are the reforms and the modern-

ization ambiguous? Are the legal reformsto protect non-state persons or merelyto rationalize and make more predict-able-as, for example, Stalin’s legalreforms in the 1930s did-a state appa-ratus ? Are the administrative stream-

lining and the quick turnover of per-sonnel, presumably recruited on a some-what consistent set of principles, goingto make for less diversity? Are thesereforms going to increase the scope ofpeople to decide or oppose decisions orwill it really increase participation?

A: There are inherent contradictionsin the reform effort, and that is onereason I have termed it an effort and nota program. There are a lot of thrusts towhat the Chinese are trying to do, someof which require a dispersion of author-.ity while others require a concentrationof authority. It is not clear how one

reconciles that. The Chinese are tryingto make the ideology looser, if you will,more compatible with a wide range ofdifferent kinds of initiatives. No one

really knows what eventual balancesshould be struck. At the same time, theyare seeking to articulate an ideologicalframework that would legitimize thewhole effort.