Institutions, informal politics, and political transition in China

Asian Survey

Volumn 36, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 230-245

  Fewsmith, Joseph ^a  

^a BOSTON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

INFORMAL POLITICS; POLITICAL SYSTEM;

CHINA;

EID: 0030477337     PISSN: 00044687     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2645690     Document Type: Article

References (25)

1. Kenneth Lieberthal and Michel Oksenberg, Policy Making in China: Leaders, Structures, and Processes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).
2. Lucian W. Pye, The Spirit of Chinese Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992).
3. One could argue that the reason the campaign against spiritual pollution, like the campaigns against bourgeois liberalization in 1987 and 1989-90, did not last was because bureaucratic interests reasserted themselves. But such a line of reasoning only highlights the question of why bureaucratic interests were overruled in the first place. It seems apparent that there is a large element of nonbureaucratic politics that needs to be examined and explained.
4. It is important to recognize that reform decisions, e.g., the movements that have interrupted the reform process, have an important ideological dimension. Thus, the term "socialist commodity economy," endorsed by the Decision, had been a focal point of ideological contention for at least four years before the Decision finally accepted it.
5. Deng Xiaoping, "Disan dai lingdao jiti de dangwu zhi ji" (Urgent matters of the third generation leadership collective), in Deng Xiaoping wenxuan, di san juan (Selected works of Deng Xiaoping, vol. 3) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1993), pp. 309-314.
6. Beijing television, in Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily Report, China (hereafter. FBIS, DR/CHI), May 16, 1989, p. 28; and Renmin ribao, in ibid., May 17, 1989, p. 16.
7. Beijing television, in Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily Report, China (hereafter. FBIS, DR/CHI), May 16, 1989, p. 28; and Renmin ribao, in ibid., May 17, 1989, p. 16.
8. Jonathan Pollack, "Structure and Process in the Chinese Military System," in Kenneth G. Lieberthal and David M. Lampton, eds., Bureaucracy, Politics, and Decision Making in Posty-Mao China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), p. 169.
9. Li Zhisui, with Anne Thurston. The Private Life of Chairman Mao (New York: Random House, 1994).
10. The four gentlemen (si da junzi) was the name given to four young reformers - Huang Jiangnan, Wang Qishan, Weng Yongxi, and Zhu Jiaming - who contributed both to the early rural and enterprise reforms.
11. Joseph Fewsmith, Dilemmas of Reform in China: Political Conflict and Economic Debate (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1994), pp. 32-33.
12. Wang Lixin, "Life After Mao Zedong: A Report on Implementation of and Major Consequences of Major Chinese Agricultural Policies in CCP Politics," Kunlun, no. 5 (December 1988), in Joint Publications Research Service (JPRS), CAR-89-079 (July 28, 1989). Of course, the political leadership was not moved just by pictures of wretched suffering in the countryside but was concerned as well about the possibility of widespread social disorder. Thus, Chen Yun warned the central work conference that immediately preceded the 1978 third plenum that if the livelihood of the peasants were not bettered, rural party secretaries would lead peasants into the cities to demand food. See Chen Yun, "Jianchi an bili yuanze tiaozheng guomin jingji" (Read-just the national economy in accordance with the principle of proportionality), in Chen Yun wenxuan (1956-1985) (Selected works of Chen Yun), p. 226.
13. Wang Lixin, "Life After Mao Zedong: A Report on Implementation of and Major Consequences of Major Chinese Agricultural Policies in CCP Politics," Kunlun, no. 5 (December 1988), in Joint Publications Research Service (JPRS), CAR-89-079 (July 28, 1989). Of course, the political leadership was not moved just by pictures of wretched suffering in the countryside but was concerned as well about the possibility of widespread social disorder. Thus, Chen Yun warned the central work conference that immediately preceded the 1978 third plenum that if the livelihood of the peasants were not bettered, rural party secretaries would lead peasants into the cities to demand food. See Chen Yun, "Jianchi an bili yuanze tiaozheng guomin jingji" (Read-just the national economy in accordance with the principle of proportionality), in Chen Yun wenxuan (1956-1985) (Selected works of Chen Yun), p. 226.
14. Luo Xiaopeng, "Rural Reform and the Rise of Localism," in Jia Hao and Lin Znimin, eds., Changing Central-Local Relations in China: Reform and State Capacity (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994), p. 115.
15. Tang Tsou, "Prolegomenon to the Study of Informal Small Groups in CCP Politics," in Tang Tsou, The Cultural Revolution and Post-Mao Reforms: A Historical Perspective (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 95-111.
16. This does not mean that this policy community was highly unified; on the contrary, it seems to have been subject to the same rifts that affected other policy communities, particularly as the rural reforms deepened and newer and more complex issues arose.
17. It is also important to emphasize, as Teiwes does, the revolutionary legitimacy Deng possessed by virtue of his long participation in, and major contributions to the victory of the CCP and the administration of the PRC prior to the Cultural Revolution. See Frederick, C. Teiwes, "The Paradoxical Post-Mao Transition: From Obeying the Leader to 'Normal Polities'," China Journal, no. 34 (July 1995), pp. 55-94. Nevertheless, despite such revolutionary legitimacy, Deng did not challenge Hua Guofeng in an intra-party meeting and then articulate an agenda but rather the other way around, suggesting the importance of issues in legitimating leadership.
18. This brief description of the origins of rural reform is not meant to suggest that either Deng or Wan had a blueprint for reform that Wan took with him to Anhui. The reality was a complex mixture of high-level support for innovation and a bottom-up push by peasants and lower-level cadres to break free of the confines of collectivization. But Wan did quickly focus on rural issues and made no effort to support the then prevailing policy of the center, which suggests his desire to undermine policies associated with Hua Guofeng.
19. Merle Goldman, "Hu Yaobang's Intellectual Network," China Quarterly, no. 126 (June 1991), pp. 219-42; and Michael Schoenhals, "The Discussion on Practice as the Sole Criterion of Truth," ibid., no. 126 (June 1991).
20. Merle Goldman, "Hu Yaobang's Intellectual Network," China Quarterly, no. 126 (June 1991), pp. 219-42; and Michael Schoenhals, "The Discussion on Practice as the Sole Criterion of Truth," ibid., no. 126 (June 1991).
21. I have tried to trace policy differences between Deng and Chen in the pre-1989 period in my Dilemmas of Reform in China and in the post-Tiananmen period in "Reaction, Resurgence, and Succession: Chinese Politics Since Tiananmen," forthcoming in Roderick MacFarquhar, ed., Chinese Politics: The Mao and Deng Eras, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press).
22. Indeed, policy decisions are rarely, if ever, optimal. The point is that policy decisions that are suboptimal because they are designed to parry opponents rather than to reach compromise are almost certain to lead to counterattacks when flaws become evident in the implementation process.
23. Tang Tsou, "The Tiananmen Tragedy," in Brantly Womack, ed., Contemporary Chinese Politics in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 319.
24. Luo yi ning ge er, Disanzhi yanjing kan Zhongguo (Looking at China through a third eye), trans. Wang Shan (Taiyuan: Shanxi People's Publishing House, 1994). See also my review in Journal of Contemporary China, no. 7 (Fall 1994), pp. 100-104.
25. Luo yi ning ge er, Disanzhi yanjing kan Zhongguo (Looking at China through a third eye), trans. Wang Shan (Taiyuan: Shanxi People's Publishing House, 1994). See also my review in Journal of Contemporary China, no. 7 (Fall 1994), pp. 100-104.