Cadre and personnel management in the CPC

China: An International Journal

Volumn 10, Issue 2, 2012, Pages 69-83

  Brødsgaard, Kjeld Erik ^a  

^a Department of Innovation and Organizational Economics   (Denmark)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84865104686     PISSN: 02197472     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/chn.2012.0016     Document Type: Note

References (64)

1. See for example, Harold Lasswell and Daniel Lerner, World Revolutionary Elites (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965).
2. Peter Bachrach, The Theory of Democratic Elitism: A Critique (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1967).
3. Anthony Giddens, The Class Structure of The Advanced Societies (New York: Harper & Row, 1975).
4. Robert D. Putnam, The Comparative Study of Political Elites (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1973).
5. and Eva Etzioni-Halevy, The Elite Connection (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993).
6. On Soviet Elites, see Seweryn Bialer, Stalin's Successor's: Leadership, Stability, and Change in the Soviet Union (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).
7. Jerry Hough, Soviet Leadership in Transition (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1980).
8. and Steven L. Solcnik, Stealing the State: Control and Collapse in Soviet Institutions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).
9. On post-communist elites, see also Gil Eyal, Ivan Szelenyi, and Eleanor Townsley, Making Capitalism Without Capitalists: The New Ruling Elites in Eastern Europe (London: Verso Press, 1998).
10. In the 1960s and 1970s, a number of pioneering studies on the Chinese elite system were published. See, for example, the contributions to Robert A. Scalapino, Elites in the People's Republic of China (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1972).
11. See also A. Doak Barnett (with a contribution by Ezra Vogel), Cadres, Bureaucracy, and Political Power in Communist China (New York: Columbia Press, 1967).
12. Michel C. Oksenberg, "Local Leaders in Rural China, 1962-1965: Individual Attributes, Bureaucratic Positions, and Political Recruitment", in Chinese Communist Politics in Action, ed. A. Doak Barnett (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1969), pp. 155-215.
13. and Ying-Mao Kau, "The Urban Bureaucratic Elite in Communist China: A Case Study of Wuhan, 1949-1965", in Chinese Communist Politics in Action, ed. Barnett, pp. 216-70.
14. This discussion draws on Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard, "From Lions to Foxes: Party and Cadres in China in the Post-Deng Era", unpublished manuscript, 2006.
15. During the 1960s, this was actually one of the basic arguments underpinning Franz Schurmann's pioneering work on China, Ideology and Organization in Communist China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), p. 1.
16. More recently, this argument was made by Andrew Nathan, David Shambaugh, Elizabeth Perry and Sebastian Heilmann, among others. See Andrew Nathan, "China's Resilient Authoritarianism", Journal of Democracy 14, no. 1 (Jan. 2003): 6-17.
17. Sebastian Heilmann and Elizabeth J. Perry, eds., Mao's Invisible Hand: The Political Foundations of Adaptive Governance in China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011).
18. and David Shambaugh, China's Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation (Berkeley and Washington, DC: University of California Press and Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2008).
19. It should be noted that, in this article, we are not concerned with new economic and social elite formations such as the private entrepreneurs and managers in foreign-funded enterprises. These are important new social strata which the current leadership is trying to co-opt by recruiting them to become Party members. This attempt to bring new social strata into the elite underlines that we are dealing with a relatively open pattern of elite recruitment in the Chinese case. Classical elite theorists emphasised that only by being able and willing to absorb new elements and layers would a given power elite (e.g., Pareto's "governing elite" and Mosca's "ruling class/political class") be able to prevent regime change and thereby its own demise. See Pareto, The Mind and Society, vol. 3: Sentiment in Thinking (London: Jonathan Cape, 1935).
20. and Gaetano Mosca, The Ruling Class (New York and London: McGraw-Hill, 1939).
21. See, for example, David M. Lampton's study of six individuals who held top government and Party positions in the immediate post-Mao era, in his Paths to Power: Elite Mobility in Contemporary China (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies, 1986).
22. Cheng Li and David Bachman's study of the social background and career pattern of 247 Chinese mayors in "Localism, Elitism, and Immobilism: Elite Formation and Social Change in Post-Mao China", World Politics 42, no. 1 (Oct. 1989): 64-94.
23. and Cheng Li's and Lynn White's analysis of the composition of the 15th Central Committee in Cheng Li and Lynn White, "The Fifteenth Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party: Full-Fledged Technocratic Leadership with Partial Control by Jiang Zemin", Asian Survey 38, no. 3 (Mar. 1998): 231-64.
24. See Pierre Bourdieu, The State Nobility (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996).
25. See Lenin, What is to be Done?: Burning Questions of Our Movement (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1973, originally published 1902).
26. See Lenin, What is to be Done?: Burning Questions of Our Movement (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1973, originally published 1902).
27. Pareto's famous distinction between "lions" and "foxes" in elite terms appears in §2178 in Volume Four of The Mind and Society entitled General Form of Society.
28. See Ezra F. Vogel, "From Revolutionary to Semi-Bureaucrat: The 'Regularisation' of Cadres", The China Quarterly 29 (Mar. 1967): 36-60.
29. Actually, classical elite theorists such as Wilfredo Pareto and Gaetano Mosca also seem to indicate a differentiation between two strata in the elite. Pareto argues: "So we get two strata in the population: (1) A lower stratum, the non-elite, with whose possible influence on government we are not just here concerned: then (2) a higher stratum, the elite, which is divided into two: (a) a governing elite: (b) a non-governing elite". In this Paretian sense, the leading cadres would form the governing elite. See Wilfredo Pareto, The Mind and Society, vol. 3, §2034.
30. For a discussion on Mosca's theory in relation to a possible "second stratum", see Tom Bottomore, Elites and Society (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1966), p. 11.
31. Giddens distinguishes between open and closed elites with high or low integration. As the Chinese power elite have a relatively open pattern of recruitment and a high level of integration, it is a "solidary elite" in Gidden's definition of the concept. Moreover, as the power of the Chinese elite seems to be concentrated and as the issue-strength of its power must be characterised as broad, it is an elite which holds autocratic power. See Anthony Giddens, The Class Structure of the Advanced Societies (New York: Harper & Row, 1975). One might add that as new social groups and strata such as private entrepreneurs and non-CPC cadres make it to the elite, it will increasingly turn into an oligarchic mode of powerholding (limited issue-strength).
32. See Zhonggong zhongyang zuzhibu, Zhonggong dangshi yanjiushi, and Zhongyang dang'an guan (Central Organization Department of the CPC, Research Office of CPC Party History, and Bureau of Central Archives), Zhongguo gongchandang zuzhishi ziliao, 1921-1997, fujuan 1 (Material on the Organisational History of China's Communist Party, 1921-1997, Appendix, vol. 1) (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe, 2000), pp. 1325-432.
33. For a discussion of this material, see Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard, "From Lions to Foxes: Party and Cadres in China in the Post-Deng Era".
34. Zhonggong zhongyang zuzhibu, Zhongguo Gongchandang zuzhishi ziliao, 1921-1997, fujuan 1, p. 1357.
35. The Chinese state comprises three main institutional components: administrative organs (xingzheng jiguan), public institutions or public service units (shiye danwei) and economic enterprises (qiye). Shiye danwei include primary schools, secondary schools and universities, hospitals, healthcare organisations, research organisations, and organisations in culture, art and mass media. They are different from administrative organs in the sense that they do not have administrative power over other administrative bodies, and they are different from economic enterprises in the sense that they are not profit-oriented. Therefore, the translation of shiye danwei is sometimes rendered as non-profit organisations. See Lam Tao-Chiu and James L. Perry, "Service Organizations in China: Reform and Its Limits, " in Remaking China's Public Management, ed. Peter Nan-Shong Lee and Carlos Wing-Hung Lo (Westport, CT: Quorum Books, 2001), pp. 19-40.
36. See also Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard and Chen Gang, "Public Sector Reform in China: Who is Losing Out?" (forthcoming).
37. See Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard and Chen Gang, "China's Civil Service Reform: An Update", EAI Background Brief No. 493, 16 Dec. 2009.
38. Zhonggong zhongyang zuzhibu, Zhongguo Gongchandang zuzhishi ziliao, 1921-1997, fujuan 1, p. 1358.
39. See Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard, Hainan-State, Society, and Business in a Chinese Province (London: Routledge, 2009), p. 80.
40. The Chinese concept for nomenklatura is zhiwu mingcheng biao (job title list). However, on occasion, the expression yaozhi xulie (order of key posts) is used to express the same phenomenon.
41. See Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard, Hainan-State, Society, and Business in a Chinese Province (London: Routledge, 2009), p. 80.
42. For further elaboration of the bianzhi system, see Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard, "Institutional Reform and the Bianzhi System in China", The China Quarterly 170 (June 2005): 361-86.
43. See Brødsgaard, Hainan-State Society and Business in a Chinese Province, p. 80.
44. See the "Danzheng lingdao ganbu xuanba renyong gongzuo tiaoli" (Regulations on Selection and Appointment of Party and Government Leading Cadres), in Renshi gongzuo wenjian xuanbian (Selected Documents on Personnel Work) (Beijing: Renshibu zhengce fagui si, 2003), pp. 8-27.
45. "Dangzheng lingdao ganbu zhiwu renqi zanxing guiding" (Preliminary Regulations on the Job Tenure of Party and State Leading Cadres), 4 July 2006.
46. "Xin yi lun zheng siji zhongyang he defang guanyuan jiaoliu renzhi qidong" (A New Round of Rotation Between Central and Local Officials Starts), at [21 May 2011].
47. See Mairi MacLean, Charles Harvey and Jon Press, "Elites, Ownership and the Internalisation of French Business", Modern and Contemporary France 9, no. 3 (2001): 313-25.
48. See Ulrike Schaede, "The 'Old Boy' Network and Government-Business Relationships in Japan", Journal of Japanese Studies 21, no. 2 (Summer 1995): 293-317.
49. Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard, "Politics and Business Group Formation in China: The Party in Control?", The China Quarterly (forthcoming, 2012).
50. Author's database.
51. "2001-20210 nian shenhua ganbu renshi zhidu gaige guihua gangyao" (Plan for Deepening the Cadre Management System During the 2001-2010 Period), at .
52. Examples include the move of Li Peng's son Li Xiaopeng from Huaneng to become Vice-Governor in Shaanxi province.
53. Recently Zhang Qingwei was moved from COMAC to become Governor of Hebei province.
54. See Randall Morck, Bernard Yeung, and Minyuan Zhao, "Perspectives on China's Outward Foreign Direct Investment", Journal of International Business Studies 39 (2008): 337-50.
55. "Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo gongwuyuan fa" (The Civil Service Law of the People's Republic of China), in Renshi gongzuo wenjian xuanbian (Selected Documents on Personnel Work) (Beijing: Renshibu zhengce faguisi, 2006), vol. 28, pp. 56-77.
56. See, for example, "Gongwuyuan zhiwu renmian yu zhiwu shengjiang guiding (shixing)" (Regulation on the Appointment, Dismissal, Promotion, and Demotion of Civil Servants [Trial]), issued by the CPC Central Organization Department and the Ministry of Personnel, 29 Feb. 2008.
57. See Brødsgaard and Chen Gang, "China's Civil Service Reform".
58. See Frank Pieke, The Good Communist: Elite Training and State Building in Today's China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
59. David Shambaugh, "Training China's Political Elite: The Party School System", The China Quarterly (Dec. 2008).
60. Gregory Chin, "Innovation and Preservation: Remaking China's National Leadership Training System", The China Quarterly (Mar. 2011).
61. Charlotte Lee, "Party Adaptation, Elite Training, and Political Selection in Reform-Era China", PhD diss., Department of Political Science, Stanford University, 2010.
62. People's Daily, 8 Oct. 2004.
63. "2010-2020 nian shenhua ganbu renshi zhidu gaige guihua gangyao" (Plan for Deepening the Cadre Management System During the 2010-2020 Period) (21 Dec. 2009), at .
64. On the concept of "competitive authoritarianism", see Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).