Written evidence submitted by Professor
Yongnian Zheng, Head of Research, China Policy Institute, University
of Nottingham
CHINA'S PARTY-STATE RELATIONS IN A NEW POLITICAL
ENVIRONMENT
CHANGING PARTY-STATE
RELATIONS ARE
KEYS TO
CHINA'S
POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT
1. Rapid economic development in the past
quarter of the century has created a new socio-economic environment
for Chinese politics. While China is an authoritarian political
system—the Chinese Communist Party (CCP, hereafter) remains
the only ruling party since 1949—the CCP has consistently
reordered its relations with the administration (the state) in
order to survive in this new environment.
2. The country's successful transition to
modern, effective governance is still very much dependent on these
changing party-state relations. Since the CCP-state relations
together form the single most important political-institutional
infrastructure in China, they are central to all political activities.
The outlook at the moment appears favourable for further political
liberalisation and democratisation: both the CCP and the state
now have broader social bases and are accommodating more participatory
elements.
THE INDISPENSABILITY
OF THE
CCP
3. The CCP is, strictly speaking, not a
"political party" by Western standards. In a modern
state, political parties are political groups that compete for
public offices through candidacy in elections. Mostly, political
parties are subsumed within the greater state structure; that
is to say, political parties are mere institutions of the state.
But in China, the CCP is considered as separate from, if not superior
to, the state itself. The party is the personification of a modern
emperor. It is a highly organised emperorship which attempts to
exercise total control over the state and society. [1]
4. The CCP's peculiar role is determined
by China's unique historical experience. China has always been
a continental power. Rulers throughout history had relied heavily
on political indoctrination and local gentries to secure their
reign. For this reason, the power of the political centre is usually
not fixed and institutionalised. Unlike a modern Westphalian state
where the central authority is contiguous throughout its bounded
territory, China's historical experience has been that of concentric
rings of graded power emanating from the centre.
5. Despite many attempts to modernise the
state, China is far from a modern state. It is, still today, "a
civilisation, which pretended to be a state", as American
political scientist Lucian Pye described it. China lacks the defining
characteristic of a modern state: the rule of law. The state is
largely incapable of performing the regulatory function entrusted
to it. In this context, the CCP becomes the most important pillar
supporting a seemingly modern state. [2]
6. The CCP's most powerful instrument is
a system called the "party (CCP) management of cadres"
(dangguan ganbu) or more commonly known as the nomenklatura
system. It is the most important organisational principle which
gives the CCP a dominant say over personnel decisions. [3]The
current practice is "two-levels-down", that is, each
level of the party structure is responsible for political appointments
that are two-levels below. For example, all positions above vice-ministerial
level (such as State President, Vice-State President, Premier,
Vice-Premiers, State Counsellors and others) fall under the jurisdiction
of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the CCP (more
specifically the Standing Committee). In this case, the Political
Bureau first selects the candidates, then passes the nominations
to the National People's Congress (NPC)-China's parliament for
approval.
7. The "party management of cadres"
system is also the most effective means for the CCP to control
localism in the country. The Political Bureau and its Department
of Organisation keeps a tight rein over the selection and appointment
of provincial party secretaries and governors. To prevent provincial
party secretaries and governors from becoming deeply rooted in
locally-vested interests, the CCP exercises the so-called "cadre
exchange system". This system allows the CCP to curtail localism
through regular exchanges in appointments between key cadres of
different localities.
8. In the post-Mao Zedong era, the party
ideology has successfully shifted from that of class struggle
to one of economic development. This would not be possible without
the nomenklatura system. During the early stages of reform,
resistance to changes was strong. To counter that, the reformist
CCP leadership resorted to the nomenklatura system to retire,
or even forcefully remove, those who resisted. The system also
allows the CCP to select the "right types" of cadres
and government officials to implement its reformist policies.
Hence, the CCP has served as an important facilitator for the
state administration to carry out its reformist policies.
9. Besides cadre management, the CCP also
helps the state administration to mobilise resources required
for the country's transition. This presents a typified weak-state-strong-party
phenomenon, and is a dilemma for China. On the one hand, continuing
one-party rule stifles the development of strong state mechanisms-a
prerequisite for a modern state; on the other hand, without the
party and its apparatus, the state administration is incapable
of moving ahead with anything at all, much less its reformist
agenda. For the moment at least, the CCP is indispensable to China's
modernisation efforts.
INSTITUTIONALISING
PARTY-STATE
RELATIONS IN
A NEW
SOCIO-ECONOMIC
ENVIRONMENT
10. China's transition has also been driven
by rapid globalisation. The country has, since the early 1990s,
become the world's most favoured destination in comparison with
all other developing countries. Not surprisingly, over 80% of
the world's 500 largest companies and its top 100 information
technology firms have set up businesses in China. Rapid decentralisation
and globalisation have nurtured a non-state sector, which now
accounts more than half the Chinese economy. Facilitated by corporatisation
and privatisation since the mid 1990s, the private sector has
been growing rapidly, especially in China's coastal provinces
such as Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Shandong.
11. An increasingly open economy has created
a sound infrastructure for an open society. By 2003, China had
surpassed the USA as the world's largest telephone market. By
mid-2005, China's registered Internet users had surpassed 100
million to form the world's second largest "web population"
after the USA.
12. This drastic socio-economic transition
has created a new environment for the CCP and the state. Such
a new environment requires the CCP to adjust its relations with
the state so that effective and sustainable governance is possible.
True enough, in recent years, the CCP leadership has repeatedly
emphasised the need to strengthen its capacity to govern an increasingly
complex society. The CCP has actively pursued this objective by
introducing reforms to strengthen state mechanisms.
13. In the 1980s, a consensus was reached
amidst heated debates on China's political reforms. Under Deng
Xiaoping and Zhao Ziyang, the party leadership sought to separate
the party from the government (dangzheng fenkai). Until
this policy turnaround, the party was all-pervasive in China's
political and administrative life, to the extent that party organisations
at times displaced state organisations. According to Deng, the
state had to have a degree of autonomy from the party in administering
the country.
14. But this consensus was never brought
to fruition in real life. Zhao Ziyang's reforms spurred political
openness and the rise of social forces. After the crackdown on
the pro-democracy movement in 1989, political conservatism loomed,
and all talks about reforming the party-state relations faded
away from political discussions.
15. Nevertheless, from the early 1990s,
the CCP began the process of institutionalising party-state relations.
This was achieved through organisational rationalisation. Among
others, the office of the State President and the Chairmanship
of the Central Military Commission are tied to the position of
the Party Secretary-General. Today the Party Secretary-General
acts in the name of the State President, especially in China's
international affairs. Prior to Jiang Zemin's accession to the
post of State President in 1993, the office was insignificant
and was usually filled by a retired revolutionary. Previous office-holders
included Madam Sun Yat-sen (Soong Ch'ing-ling), Li Xiannian and
Yang Shangkun.
16. In an attempt to institutionalise party-state
relations, both State Presidency and State Vice-Presidency have
now become the most important positions in the Chinese leadership.
The posts are currently occupied by Hu Jintao and Zeng Qinghong
respectively. Institutionalisation has not only brought about
some level of "division of functions" between important
public offices, it also has the benefit of legitimatising the
Party's command over the military. While the basic principle the
"the Party commands the gun" remains largely unchanged,
this power is now vested in a formal office, which acts on behalf
of the party.
MORE SPACE
FOR PROFESSIONALISM
17. Ideological reliability is slowly giving
way to allow more professionalism in the ranks of government officials.
To boost effective governance the CCP, since the mid 1990s, has
begun to loosen its grip on state appointments to give professionals
more autonomy in the day-to-day running of the country.
18. The most visible signs are those within
the State Council (China's Executive branch). The Council has,
over the years, become a body of economic and social management
by professionals. The posts of Premier, Vice Premier, State Councillor,
ministers and vice ministers are now filled by professionals.
This is especially for positions at the ministerial and vice-ministerial
levels. The rise of professionalism largely reflects the increasing
need for special expertise in dealing with the complexities of
new social and economic issues.
19. Professionalism has also been injected
into both the NPC and local people's congresses. The NPC is largely
an inefficient platform due to its massive size, which hovers
around 3,000. It convenes for only a very short period annually;
its annual conference usually spans about 10-14 days. Moreover,
the structure of its meeting, which is made up of full-day plenary
sessions, is not suited for lengthy deliberations. To overcome
these shortcomings, NPC reforms since the early 1990s have focused
on expanding the Standing Committee and establishing special committees.
20. Over the years, the Standing Committee
has been expanded to its present strength of 176 members. The
expanded Standing Committee functions as a "miniature-NPC"—its
small size allows more frequent and efficient consultations as
compared to the NPC, yet it is large enough to accommodate different
social and political bases, particularly those who are non-CCP
members. The expansion of this group of "first-among-equals"
serves to raise the quality of motions tabled during annual NPC
conferences, and allows follow-up on NPC decisions when the need
arises.
21. Currently, the NPC has nine special
committees in the areas of Foreign Affairs, Finance, Education,
Minorities, and Agricultural and Rural Affairs. Its number is
likely to increase in the future. Special committees usually draw
their members from two sources: government officials who had previously
served in various state organisations, and specialists in particular
fields. These special committees provide special expertise and
public office experience both in the law-making process and in
supervision of the daily functioning of the government (the State
Council and its various ministries). Professionalisation has altered
the role of the NPC from that of a "rubber stamp", to
one that is capable of overseeing governmental operations.
POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT
WITH DIFFERENT
SOCIAL GROUPS
22. The CCP has an aversion to bottom-up
initiatives; it is more comfortable with the top-down approach
through which it is able to keep developments in check. In recent
years, the party has been accountable for continuing tight political
control, and crackdowns on budding social movements. Yet there
are also moves taken by the CCP to broaden its social base by
pro-actively engaging different social groups, particularly new
social forces that have emerged in China's changing socio-economic
environment. Effective governance requires the CCP to solicit
political support from these groups.
23. This is clearly manifested by the profound
changes that have occurred within the CCP's membership. During
Mao's era, the CCP was a revolutionary party that was dominated
by workers and peasants. In 1956, the two groups made up 83% of
the party membership. When Deng came to power, he initiated a
so-called technocratic movement, replacing workers and peasants
with technocrats. Since then, the representation of workers and
peasant has dwindled from 64% in 1981 to 48% in 1994. The CCP
is working adjust itself to China's fast-changing political reality.
24. Having successfully introduced technocrats
into the party and government bodies, the CCP began to recruit
private entrepreneurs into the party. This is a part of the overall
"interest representation" strategy adopted by the party
leadership. The decision to admit private entrepreneurs (or "capitalists")
into the party was controversial since the Central Committee of
the CCP issued a regulation to prohibit private entrepreneurs
from joining the party after the 1989 crackdown. The new initiative,
which occurred in the year 2000 under the guise of san ge dai
biao (literally, "three represents"), was a remarkable
policy turnaround for the party. When Hu came to power in 2003,
he began to shift the party's priority to less privileged social
classes such as farmers and urban workers, which is in line with
his "pro-people" image that he was trying to cultivate.
25. The expansion of NGOs and their functions
are important measures to gauge social engagement by the CCP.
The number of NGOs in China has increased steadily over the years.
Prior to 1978, there were only about 100 national social organisations
in China. But statistics released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs
(MCA), which is in charge of NGO registration, show that by the
end of 2003, their number had reached 1,736. Meanwhile, the number
of local-level social organisations grew from 6,000 to 142,121.
The number of private non-enterprise units (PNEUs), which did
not exist before the reforms, hit 124,491.
26. The state is today actively creating
and sponsoring NGOs to take over hitherto state functions. In
the economic sphere, the government has established intermediary
organisations such as trade associations and chambers of commerce
to perform sectoral coordination and regulation functions, which
in the process reduced its direct management role. In the social
welfare sphere, the government is looking at fostering NGOs on
which it can offload some burdens of service provision. In the
social development sphere, the government makes use of NGOs to
mobilise societal resources to supplement its own spending. However,
unlike their counterparts in Europe and the US, these NGOs are
far from autonomous. They will have to tow the line of the Chinese
government in order to remain relevant and effective.
27. Due to this lack of autonomy, the political
influence of China's NGOs tends to vary, depending on their agenda.
In some areas such as poverty reduction, charity and environmental
issues, NGOs are encouraged to play greater roles. But in other
areas such as religions issues, ethnicity, and human rights, the
influence of NGOs is virtually absent. Some NGOs are more powerful
than the others. On one end of the spectrum, commercial organisations
are generally influential and powerful; it is not difficult to
find business people sitting in the People's Congress and the
Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) at
different levels of government. At the other end, workers and
farmers are not allowed to organise themselves, and thus do not
have any effective mechanisms to articulate and aggregate their
interests.
CONTINUING POLITICAL
CONTROL OVER
THE STATE
28. Under China's one-party system, it is
unrealistic to expect a clear-cut separation of the CCP from the
state. Thus the issue is not whether, but how the
CCP will exercise control over the state. The CCP has devoted
a great deal of its reform effort to adjust-through institutionalisation
and rationalisation-its relations with the state. The only difference
is: while the CCP took front stage in the early days, now there
is a tendency for the party to operate behind the scene.
29. The CCP makes effective use of party-state
mechanisms to achieve this feat. The State Council, NPC and other
key state organisations all have their own internal party groups
(dang zu). These are "leading groups" which usually
convene to solicit consensus among major interests, prior to important
policy decisions. To a certain degree, the dang zu in the
NPC performs a function that is parallel to the parliamentary
grouping in western democracies, except that the former is more
powerful due to the nature of one-party system in China.
30. At local levels, the party is dominant
in a similar way. At the provincial level, the CCP dictates local
politics through the provincial party secretary, who is at the
same time the Chairman of the Provincial People's Congress. This
was previously not the case. The Chairman of the Provincial People's
Congress used to be filled by a powerless retired cadre or government
official. The new tie-in led to the belief that the CCP can now
exercise direct control over provincial people's congresses, but
at the same time, there is also little doubt that provincial party
secretaries, as representatives of the central leadership, now
come face-to-face with local people's representatives. The provincial
party secretaries now need to listen to and take the representatives'
opinions into consideration before the provincial party committees
can make important decisions. The only institutional gap is to
establish formal mechanisms to underline this new relationship.
31. For the foreseeable future, the CCP
is unlikely to give up the one-party system. But the party has
been relentlessly searching for a feasible solution to rationalise
its relations with the state. So far, "rigid flexibility"
best describes the overall evolution of the CCP: the overall structure
remains intact while its content consistently undergoes changes.
It is thus important to see China's new party-state relationship
in the light of these content changes, despite a seemingly unchanged
one-party structure.
Professor Yongnian Zheng
China Policy Institute
University of Nottingham
1 March 2006
1 Franz Schurmann, Ideology and Organization in
Communist China (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
1968). Back
2
Schurmann, op. cit. Schurmann argued, "Communist
China is like a vast building made of different kinds of brick
and stone. However, it was put together, it stands. What holds
it together is ideology and organization." This remains largely
unchanged even till today. Back
3
While the state administration has assumed part of this power
since the reform and open-door policy, the party still controls
the most important personnel appointments. Back
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