The 4th International Conference
on
Public Management in the 21st Century:
Opportunities and Challenges
第四屆 21 世紀的公共管理：機遇與挑戰
國際學術研討會
Chinese State Bureaucracy and Democratization:
Contradictions and Strategization
King W. Chow
(Sichuan University)
22/10 – 23/10/2010
Macau, China 中國 澳門
澳门大学第四届 21 世纪的公共管理-机遇与挑战国际学术研讨会:中国行政系统与民主化的矛盾及战略化
Chinese State Bureaucracy and
Democratization:
Contradictions and Strategization
中国行政系统与民主化的矛盾及战略化
King W. Chow
Sino-US University Design Institute, School of Public Administration
Sichuan University,
Chengdu, Sichuan, China 610064
[email protected]

This paper has been accepted for publication by Public Organization Review. Please do not cite
or quote without the author ’s written consent.
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澳门大学第四届 21 世纪的公共管理-机遇与挑战国际学术研讨会:中国行政系统与民主化的矛盾及战略化
Chinese State Bureaucracy and
Democratization:
Contradictions and Strategization
中国行政系统与民主化的矛盾及战略化
King W. Chow
Sino-US University Design Institute, School of Public Administration
Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China
610064
Abstract
Joining the current debate in the field of China studies, this paper argues that
the two extremes of the inevitability and impossibility of democratization
are not necessarily the only two trajectories of political development in
China and that China can develop a genuine democracy that builds on, and
in turn nurtures, responsible citizenship and administratorship, if CPC
undertakes strategization to cope with the fundamental contradictions
between democratization and political monism and reactionary logic of
administration. Two examples of strategizing actions are given to illustrate
how democratization may be enhanced.
Keywords: democratization; logic of administration; state cadre;
strategization
INTRODUCTION
China is an activist state, subscribing to statism basing on Marxist-Leninist
principles and Mao Zedong’s dialectical understanding (Chan & Chow, 2007). The
country has developed rapidly since the economic reform and opening- up policies
were initiated in 1978 (Zhu, 2007). Just in three decades, PRC’s GDP reached
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US$3,670 billion, foreign exchange reserves amounted to US$1,528 billion, annual
government revenue totaled US$1,209 billion, and the number of poor people was
reduced from 250 million in 1978 to 14.79 million in 2007 (Cheng & Lu, 2009). In the
light of these and other impressive achievements, such as completing the spacewalk in
2008, hosting the Olympics in 2008, and honoring the World Trade Organization
(WTO) treaty, reformers in many developing countries ask: Is the model of political
and socio-economic development applicable in other contexts?
In view of many negative reports, such as corruption, citizen rights abuse, and
occurrence of riots on a continual basis, however, observers are prone to highlight the
defects of the model with ―Chinese characteristics‖—monopoly and misuse of state
power. At present, there is a consensus among researchers in the field of China studies
that China needs political reform to address various issues and problems in order to
avoid political turmoil. But researchers disagree among themselves with regard to the
possible political development in China. One stream of studies suggests that as China
further develops, democratization would become inevitable. For example, Gilley
(2008, p. 275) proposes:
In my own study of cross- national sources of legitimacy…large deviations
from the regression line became nearly impossible above about $10,000 GDP
per capita (purchasing power parity, 2002 dollars), meaning that being a
democracy was nearly a necessity above this level. China will likely enter this
zone around the year 2020. From this perspective, China is not an outlier
from the modernization paradigm but merely at an earlier stage of it. In other
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澳门大学第四届 21 世纪的公共管理-机遇与挑战国际学术研讨会:中国行政系统与民主化的矛盾及战略化
words, China is still on schedule for democratization driven by value
change–induced legitimacy crisis ...
Another stream of studies, however, points to the contrary: As Hagopien (2000, p.
900) reports, ―Based on a data set of 135 countries over a period of 40 years,
Przeworski and Limongi (1997, p. 165) found little support for the claim that
socioeconomic modernization spurs the establishment of democratic regimes. ‖ Other
researchers also underscore that economic reform in China has created complications,
making democratization difficult. For example, in the past few years China has
introduced such local governance reform as offloading local government enterprises
onto private or ―corporate‖ entities and a rationalization of local bureaucracy through
downsizing and mergers, (Caulfield, 2006) only to find that the reforms have created
incentives for local officials to engage in rent-seeking and utility- maximizing
behaviors, which create inequity, thus triggering social uprising in various part of
China (Chow & Luo, 2007). Still others have suggested the impossibility of
democratization: Guo’s (2001) analysis of the monopoly of political power by the
Communist Party of China (CPC) reveals that political monism can be a sufficient
condition for distorting democratization, as procedural democracy could be turned into
an organized and regulated political process rather than deliberation and expression of
citizens’ free wills.
The two extremes of the inevitability and impossibility of democratization,
however, are not necessarily the only two trajectories of political development in
China. This paper argues that China may develop a new form of democracy that builds
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on,
and
in
turn
nurtures,
responsible citizenship
and
substantive-rational
administratorship, if CPC undertakes strategization, which is a process of optimizing
the available know-how, resources, and capabilities to create new external and/or
internal conditions necessary to achieving future goals (in this case, genuine
democratization). Strategization involves the application of knowledge and skills
basing on deep understanding, keen discernment, and a capacity for sound judgment.
CPC has a tradition of using strategies to modify environmental constraints (see below
for a detailed account), its strategization may become a fruitful pursuit in
democratizing China. It goes without saying that the democratization pursuit is
difficult. After all, China is an activist state, subscribing to statism basing on
Marxist-Leninist principles and Mao Zedong’s dialectical understanding (Chan &
Chow, 2007)—as the following two sections show, there are some fundamental
contradictions in the Chinese political system that adversely affect democratization.
The third section of the paper then reviews CPC’s strategization experience and
presents a list of factors essential to enhancing meaningful democratization in China.
THE STATE BUREAUCRACY AS A CONTROL INSTRUMENT
There is a rich mine of literature about the administrative system and bureaucratic
processes and politics of China. Kallgren’s work (1979) characterizes China as a
society caught up in development and modernization, striving chiefly to raise the
standard of living of its population. Following this line of thinking, we may treat
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China as merely a developing country governed by a Marxist-Leninist party, and better
understand why the current CPC leadership, following the path of Deng Xiaoping, is
willing to adopt various pragmatic policies, including the legitimatization of a market
economy and the granting of constitutional protection of property rights to capitalists,
in order to attain the goal of rapid modernization. Further, we can diagnose Chinese
political and administrative problems through the development perspective and
articulate explanatory propositions that are applicable in other developing countries
(see Segal & Thun, 2001).
But China is more than a developing country. Researchers have noted that
socialist China, being governed by a Marxist-Leninist party that subscribes to Mao
Zedong’s logic of political and socioeconomic development, has characteristics and
experiences that deeply influence how the political and administrative systems operate.
For example, Morgan (1981) finds that Chinese bureaucratic problems are rooted in
the legacy of the Chinese socialist experience; Dittmer (1981) reveals that factionalism,
as a factor affecting the operation of the state bureaucracy, was part of China’s
Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) experience. Because China has institutionalized a
Soviet-type command economy under the dictatorship of CPC, regime-type variables
within this context invariably affect the nature, processes, and outcomes of Chinese
state administration. This also means that a better understanding of CPC’s metapolicy
is warranted.
Metapolicy is policy about making policies (Dror, 1968, 1983). In accordance
with Dror (1970), the principles of metapolicy help scholars deal with the
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characteristics of policymaking systems (structure, process patterns, personnel, inputs,
and stipulated outputs) and master policies (strategies, overall goals, basic
assumptions, conceptual frameworks, policy instruments, and similar interpolicy
directives). While Dror did not classify the two types, we may label the first type as
constitutional metapolicy and the second as substantive metapolicy. Only a handful of
articles have been published on metapolicy in the past two decades (notably Chan &
Chow, 2007; Chow, 1994; DeSario & Langton, 1987; Jarman & Kouzmin, 1994;
Johnson & Heilman, 1987). The reason is obvious: policy analysis inevitably pays
attention to the strategies, overall goals, basic assumptions, conceptual frameworks,
policy instruments, and similar interpolicy directives of substantive policies. The
effort to use an umbrella concept in substantive policy analysis therefore seems to be
redundant. Besides, political systems in developed countries are comparatively more
stable than those in developing countries, and the characteristics of their policymaking
systems more transparent. Further study of constitutional metapolicy may be futile.
But if different types of substantive policy ―spawn different power relationships
among individuals and groups, and these relationships can be described and predicted
on the basis of policy type‖ (Smith, 2002, p. 379), there is certainly a need to examine
how the different types of policy are built on. An analytic analysis of metapolicy is
long overdue. More importantly, in developing countries, where political stability can
be a luxury, constitutional metapolicy deserves serious research attention.
Fundamental to the concept of constitutional metapolicy- making in developing
countries is that policy makers establish obligatory ground rules for dealing with
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uncertainty and meeting ecological challenges. These ground rules or doctrines may
or may not be compatible with the objective reality that is in the process of
transformation. The consequences of incompatibility can be devastating—paralyzing
the policy- making system or even leading to the destruction of a polity (Johnson &
Heilman, 1987): for example, Mikhail Gorbachev’s reformulation of the metapolicy
from centralization to decentralization had resulted in the disintegration of the former
Soviet Union (Kux, 1990).
China is a
unitary administrative state with policy formulation and
implementation powers vested in the hands of state cadres under the CPC’s strict
control. 1 This power monopoly model was built on the revolutionary experience of
CPC between the 1920s and the 1940s. With a military created and reinforced by tight
Party control and unquestioning loyalty, the CPC was able to defeat the Nationalist
Party’s well- equipped army of over 4 million men (Uhalley, 1988). Two basic
constitutional metapolicy principles that predated the creation of the PRC in 1949
have
remained
unchanged.
The
principles—Party
leadership
and
unitary
command—have guided the formulation of state administration policy. For Party
leadership, a dual bureaucracy—the interlocking operation of the state and Party
bureaucracies—has been in place for more than five decades. When the CPC came to
power in 1949, it was still a small revolutionary party lacking the needed human
In the 1950s, the term ―cadre‖ was used to denote anyone in China with a formal position of leadership or state
employees above a certain rank. Since the Great Leap Forward in 1957, it has become a standard practice to label
all state employees, except manual workers, as cadres regardless of their official ranks. According to the Central
Organization Department of Communist Party of China (CPC), as of 2003, there were a total of 39,572,000 state
cadres, with 6,537,000 working in the state and Party bureaucracies
(http://www.chinapop.gov.cn/rkxx/ztbd/t20040604_13417.htm). An informant serving as a deputy head of
personnel bureau had reported to the author in 2009 that as of 2008, there were around 76.5 millions state cadres,
with 6 millions working in the state and Party bureaucracies (i.e., the so-called civil servants).
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resources and expertise to take over the whole state administrative apparatus. It
therefore retained most former civil servants of the Nationalist government even
though their political loyalty was questionable. In order to keep the civil service under
Party control and to maximize its contribution, the dual bureaucracy mechanism was
employed, in which CPC offices were established alongside the state administrative
apparatus. These Party offices made all important administrative decisions and
oversaw their implementation even though they were not directly functioning within
the state bureaucracy. From 1949 to the present, Party secretaries paralleling every
level of the state bureaucracy are key leaders in their own right: they represent the
Party and discharge the duties of maintaining Party control and enforc ing decrees
issued by the CPC Politburo. It is hardly atypical for lower echelons to receive direct
instructions from Party offices that supersede administrative decrees or even legal
stipulations. It is in this context that the secretariats of Party committees are entrusted
with the responsibility and authority to develop and approve management policies and
to design, as well as monitor, daily operational procedures and processes.
The dual bureaucracy was established and has been maintained simply to ensure
unitary command under the CPC leadership. All units are instruments of the central
authority—the Politburo or more specifically the Standing Committee of the
Politburo—for implementing its decisions. While local officials have the discretion to
act on behalf of the Party to cope with idiosyncratic problems and respond to local
challenges, defiance of Party line and policies, if discovered or reported, is typically
penalized by removal from office. Work groups are sent to investigate officials of
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Party and administrative danwei (work units) whose loyalty is in question. To further
tighten command, the current leadership has arranged to send investigation teams in
disguise to document deviant behavior (Chan & Chow, 2007). Thus, when the CPC
leadership issues policy statements or demand s action, lower-level units rarely fail to
comply, at least in appearance.
Within this unitary command system, both top-down and bottom-up approaches
to decision- making are adopted: when administrative leaders such as the primer and
state councilors are committed to a particular policy issue (or outcome), ministries
and commissions are required to conduct analysis and program design that will
facilitate the formulation and implementation of the respective policy; but when
higher authorities show little interest in an issue or leadership attention is absent,
ministries and commissions as well as provincial governments may set their own
policy agendas, submit policy proposals, and develop specific implementation plans
for approval by higher authority. The same applies at the local level. What this
practically means that even a state cadre performing merely clerical tasks at the
township level may make critical decisions, creating hardship or benefits for peasants.
It is due to the loophole of this metapolicy of unitary command that state cadres at any
rank could monopolize public authorities while the bureaucracy as a whole functions
as the wielder of political power in China.
With Party leadership and unitary command as the constitutional metapolicy
principles in place, the logical way to operationalize it is with adoption of the
substantive metapolicy doctrine of ―the Party controlling cadres.‖ Building on this,
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the civil service law that became effective on 1 January 2006 stipulated that the Party
has full management control over state civil servants—hence there is no distinction
between state civil servants and cadres (Chan & Li, 2006).
The CPC leadership has
also adopted certain substantive public management principles to actualize the
doctrine of ―the Party controlling cadres.‖ These prescribe who is to be entrusted with
the administrative power to implement Party policies and orders; as one informant, a
duty head of personnel bureau, reported, cadres are to be professionally competent
and committed to serving the people, and they must not rebel, break laws, defy
decrees, commit crimes (including embezzlement and corruption), or support enemies
of the regime (including foreign forces and anti- government organizations, such as
Falungong). These doctrines have remained intact over the past decades, even though
modifications have been made. During the Cultural Revolution, for example,
disrespect for Mao was a punishable offense; in the period following the Tiananmen
Incident, showing discontent was considered a sign of distrust in the Party leadership.
But in the current developmental stage, the Party leadership has adopted a relatively
lenient approach, sticking primarily to regulations regarding law-breaking and thus
allowing cadres at various echelons to actualize their potential in contributing to
economic development. As long as cadres do not cross the line into open defiance of
the Party, they have the liberty to make whatever decisions are within their
administrative prerogative.
Added to these principles is another important substantive metapolicy
doctrine—comradeship. This doctrine has been consistently in force since the 1920s,
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except during the Cultural Revolution, during which the political struggle became so
brutal that even comradeship principles did not apply. The doctrine of comradeship
prescribes how cadres are to interact with each other: they are to exhibit cooperation,
support, and fraternity in the course of state-building. Because of comradeship, cadres
are to criticize themselves and the work of others in order to achieve
self-enhancement. To be a comrade, rather than a foe in the class struggle, one needs
to be vitally concerned with supporting improvement in others and with granting
others the opportunity to correct their own actions and redeem the mistakes they have
made. Such a prescription deters cadres from imposing harsh penalties such as
termination, demotion, or even arrest of offenders for breaking the law. Instead,
offenders or underperformers may be transferred, asked to take a long leave, or
ordered to wait at home for new job assignment. All these actions stem from a
principle of comradeship—leniency that allows room for correction and improvement.
This metapolicy may work well in a context such as wartime struggle, when unity
and fraternity can help generate synergy and mutual support. In relatively stable
environments, however, the doctrine creates leeway for leading cadres (those in
leadership posts) to interpret events to decide how lenient they will be in disciplinary
action. This, in essence, reinforces the political power of the leading cadres. On the
one hand, cadres, who recognize that cultivation of good interpersonal relationships
will help their prospects of receiving favorable treatment from leading cadres, will
become submissive to higher authority and, on the other, leading cadres, having the
discretion to apply the comradeship doctrine as they see fit, can passively or actively
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manipulate management policies to make them more ambiguous. Ambiguity makes
interpretation all the more necessary and fosters an environment in which leading
cadres may monopolize all powers. In the Chinese state bureaucracy, comradeship is a
magic spell (fabao) that can get cadres out of hot water. When in trouble, cadres who
have good social relations (guanxi) with others, particularly leading cadres, usually
succeed in getting the degree and extent of their errors reinterpreted down. The
contradiction created by comradeship at the current stage of administrative reform is
obvious: comradeship, in theory, may promote social coherence and fraternity, but in
practice in this reform era when China is ostensibly striving to be a country ruled by
law and reason, it reinforces subjectivity and politicization. Practicing comradeship
easily breaks the spirit of law and order.
It should be noted that the aforementioned substantive metapolicy principles and
doctrines are in essence second-order metapolicies, all of which are subject to the
manipulation of contextualized and historical forces, particularly leadership influence.
In short, unlike the constitutional metapolicy, they a re relatively changeable. The
arrests of many leading cadres for law-breaking in the past few years (see, for example,
Caulfield, 2006) do point to an emerging practice of the CPC leadership to adopt a
stern approach in order to tighten Party control at the expense of comradeship.
Regardless, the enforcement of the constitutional and substantive metapolicies has
compelled state cadres to observe the norms and values in the bureaucracy: for
example, submission to authority; support CPC policy intent; subscription to fraternity.
As a result, the logic of administration with ―Chinese Characteristics‖ prevails in the
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bureaucracy (see below). More importantly, CPC’s monopoly of policy- making and
administrative powers is guaranteed. This means the CPC leadership has neither the
need nor incentive to democratize China. Seemingly, sharing its monopolized powers
with political opponents in particular and the citizenry generally would become an
option unless legitimacy of its leadership becomes a compelling issue when massive
scale rebellion surfaces. As China progresses further, CPC would have greater capacity
to handle social unrest and environmental turbulence, as it has done in the past few
years—for example, multi-billion yuan in subsidy have been channeled to rura l areas
to increase peasants’ income and to raise their standard of living, thus reducing direct
conflicts between peasants and cadres due to tax and fee collection mandated by the
government. In short, this fundamental contradiction between political monism and
democracy makes it questionable that democratization of China may be forthcoming
as some researchers have suggested.
THE LOGIC OF ADMINISTRATION
The aforementioned CPC metapolicies have created a consistent pattern of
interactive forces that drive various Chinese bureaucratic behaviors, similar to what
Prahalad and Bettis (1986) called dominant logic in strategic management. In their
award-winning article, Prahalad and Bettis stated, ―Dominant logic… is a mind set or
a world view or conceptualization of the business and the administrative tools to
accomplish goals and make decisions‖ (1986, p. 491).
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Chinese cadres’ worldview—a perspective of the world and human life—or their
mindset—fixed mental attitude or disposition that predetermines cadres’ responses to
and interpretations of situations—is rather stable in the reform era. 2 Cadres exhibit a
remarkable consistency in their ways of interpreting and responding to events. While
the
responses
in
the
administrative
context
triggered
by
situation-
or
information-specific stimuli may seem random, they do not deviate much from the
general patterns of decision-making. We can call this the logic of administration,
which is operationalized by a configuration of cadres’ beliefs, values, and dispositions,
and which drives cadres to interpret events and decide how to respond.
For example, the Ministry of Education (MOE) initiated in 2004 an education
quality assessment program that dispatched assessment experts selected from leading
universities to assess all tertiary institutions. In response, tertiary institutions launched
a massive scale of falsification of documents by re- grading examination papers,
rewriting graduation theses (on behalf of the respective graduates), composing
management and pedagogic policy papers and rules and regulations that were
non-existent before the assessment, etc. Students were also hired to help their teachers
complete the falsification in a timely manner. It goes without saying that some tertiary
institutions even bribed the assessment experts by sending them expensive notebook
computers, in addition to wining and dining. As expected, tertiary institutions did not
have trouble in passing the assessment.
2
It should be noted that, in essence, worldview and mindset can be considered equivalence or synonym as
Prahalad and Bettis (1986) did. After all, both involve beliefs, values, and dispositions—all enmeshed in the living
webs of interacting cognitive, affective, situational, historical, and motivational factors—to act in certain ways that
are quite similar.
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This pro forma assessment reveals how officials make decisions and respond to
decisions made: MOE officials are to give evidence to the CPC leadership that they
are vitally concerned with quality even though they do not take the assessment
outcome seriously; administrators of tertiary institutions are to submit to the authority
of MOE; teachers (and students) are to follow the instructions from above; and experts
are not to rock the boat. All these do not contribute to the raising of education quality.
Rather, all participants recognize that the pro forma assessment is just as other official
mandate that can be performed perfunctorily or satisfied by outright cheating.
The underlying logics of these stakeholders are remarkably similar: the
administrative world is rather predictable in that, while new programs are to be
formulated and sacred orders and decrees are to be issued by administrative leaders to
document their performance in order to keep their leadership post or get promoted,
there are always too many stakeholders involved for administrative leaders to get
serious in monitoring implementation and/or evaluating the programs. Thus, just
follow instructions, but not to take the details too seriously in order to make life easier
for everyone, while making sure that outright non-compliance must be covered up.
This basic logic has been applied in other situations. For example, local government
officials are keen to invite companies to sign memorandum of investment in their
jurisdiction, many of them do not bother if the investment actually takes place. After
all, the total figure of proposed investment is already sufficient to please their
supervisors in the work unit, who could then report the ―increase in investment‖ to
their supervising authority for credit-taking.
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Given CPC’s metapolicies, state cadres’ submissiveness, passivity, and even
organizational cheating are expected. But cadres also monopolize political and
administrative powers. Their tendencies to focus on self- serving and aggrandizement
would deter democratization in China. Unfortunately, atomization of interests (Lane,
1949) has become inevitable due to historical event and defective administrative
monitoring.
CPC launched its Anti-Rightist Movement in 1957, targeting at the liberal critics
who, although lending political support to CPC in the past, did not find the state
administration’s performance satisfactory. Then, in 1959, the Party purged many
outspoken leaders from CPC for their criticism of the Great Leap Forward Movement,
pointing to the likely occurrence of disasters. This critical incident sent signals to all
cadres that there was no longer room for critics, no matter how valid their analysis was
and how well- intended the critics were. Genuine democratic-centralism was no longer
practiced, and authoritarian leadership emerged. All these led to the change of logic
behind cadre action: most knew what to do—just performed their jobs, be submissive,
and be quite. Some cadres, in contrast, had learned from the Great Leap Forward
Movement that it was perfectly all right to please their superiors, even by exaggerat ing
accomplishment or falsifying figures, and integrity might not be that desirable in times
of economic hardship while power was a currency for self-protection. Since 1957,
egoistic values surfaced, slowly but surely.
During the Cultural Revolution, radicals and opportunists, along with the mobs,
stormed the state bureaucracy. As they practiced many dirty tricks to seize power and
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suppress opponents, they objectified a reality characterized by irresponsibility,
extremism, corruption, and realpolitik. In such a context, one’s survival depended very
much on whom one knew, what power one had, and what tricks could one use to
maintain good relationships with others. As such, state cadres became self-centered,
concerned merely with protecting their own interests. Since then, most cadres had
become present-oriented and self- interested, lacking commitment to serving the public.
While there was still a minority committed to the communist cause, they might be
suppressed by their leading cadres or have alienated their colleagues, or were
overloaded due to their willingness to accept responsibilities. Regardless, they became
isolated as the others had accepted the prevailing norms of self-serving and
pragmatism. Their logic had changed into one that made them mechanica lly reacted to
stimuli without critical reflection. In interpreting situations, they merely considered
how egoistic value could be upheld, while altruism and integrity, as well as the motto
of serving the people, were merely words to be uttered to ensure job security.
The Cultural Revolution had laid a foundation for cadres’ to lean towards
atomization of interest. The rapid economic development, along with inadequate
administrative monitoring of cadres’ usage of public authority, has promoted interest
atomization, making it part of the logic of administration. In brief, state cadres do
know well the name of the game—People’s Dictatorship under the leadership of
CPC—and act accordingly in this context of monopoly of public authority. Corruption
becomes epidemic due to unchecked absolute power vested in the bureaucracy; and
rent-seeking is observable in every public entities, including schools, hospitals, and
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澳门大学第四届 21 世纪的公共管理-机遇与挑战国际学术研讨会:中国行政系统与民主化的矛盾及战略化
even social security offices. Many cadres have experienced subtle transformation,
changing from vanguards of the proletariat dictatorship into a hybrid, monopolizing
both political and economic powers, exercising power like the old vanguards while
living like capitalists and supporting the CPC regime (and even reforming the
bureaucracy) , in order to maintain their privileged status and protect their power base.
Outright corrupt practices are socially and politically unacceptable, and cadres
could be sacked if documented. But when cadres acquire the know-how in optimizing
benefits from legitimate investment through the unethical or inappropriate use of
formal power, they may soon undergo the same transformation as some cadres in
Guangdong and Shanghai do. The full- scale transformation is likely to have a
fundamental effect on CPC’s ruling of China. After all, at least from the chaos
theorists’ point of view (Farazmand, 2004; Overman, 1996), as Chan and Chow (2007)
have suggested, atomization of economic power, when blended with atomization of
administrative power, may eventually trigger atomization of political power, making
democratization impossible.
Cadres’ monopoly and abuse of public authority have alienated the citizenry.
Inevitably, mass protests and riots have appeared here and there in the past few years.
Social discontent and unrest, however, have been covered up. In short, the political
development of China is hardly stable. Crises may emerge particularly when China
moves into an economic stagnant context, in which plentiful citizens would find that
they got nothing to lose in rising up against the government. The Hu Jintao leadership
has been striving to turn China into a more equitable, harmonious administrative state
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澳门大学第四届 21 世纪的公共管理-机遇与挑战国际学术研讨会:中国行政系统与民主化的矛盾及战略化
(Gallagher, 2005; Saich, 2006, 2007). Yet, given the current logic of administration,
the realization of substantive rationality that enhances such higher order values as
equity, equality, liberty, and citizen participation in policy- making is difficult, if not
impossible. In fact, further reform is hardly a solution to current problems, because
atomization of interests, a process of making individual interests the prime concern in
public decision- making situations, has taken root in China. Lane had already cautioned
in 1949 (p. 162) that, while atomization of interests had promoted functional
representation, interest group politics could undermine genuine democracy. In China, a
Marxist-Leninist state with public authority monopolized by state cadres, atomization
of interests creates even more problems, in addition to defying democratization.
STRATEGIZATION FOR POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT
Currently, atomization of interests is becoming part of the logic of administration,
which has caused various socio-economic problems. One may argue that more reform
must be introduced to change this logic of administration, which, together with CPC’s
metapolicies, has created fundamental contradictions that make democratization in
China difficult. The reform thesis, however, is insufficient in that, as mentioned earlier,
many cadres are already in transformation and readily know the ways and means to
sabotage reforms. Nevertheless, the impossibility of democratization proposition may
still be invalid if strategization is introduced.
Strategization involves application of professional public administration
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澳门大学第四届 21 世纪的公共管理-机遇与挑战国际学术研讨会:中国行政系统与民主化的矛盾及战略化
knowledge and skills basing on deep understanding, keen discernment, and a capacity
for sound judgment—in short, human wisdom. To strategize, reformers need to ensure
that they are wisdomized: that is, to have developed the abilities to have a grasp of the
nature, significance, and explanation of public administration phenomena, to
comprehend what is obscure and changing, and to form and evaluate unsubstantiated
opinions and futuristic propositions. This developmental process can be labeled as
wisdomization.
CPC’s strategization experience is revealing. In the early 20th Century, China was
an agricultural society—politically, militarily, and economically backward—with
power monopolized by warlords and gentry, who deliberately used force to maintain
their ruling. By then, the revolutionaries were concerned with crushing warlords to
restore peace and order. Their dominant logic was structured in such a way that
revolutionaries primarily saw the use of regular troops as the only solution. The
outcome, however, was merely that they became instruments of tuff warfare among
warlords in disguise of revolution.
Lenin’s success in establishing a revolutionary state in 1911 triggered the logic
renewal of some revolutionaries, such as Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, to underline
the power of the proletariats in transforming China. CPC was formed in 1921 with
50-plus members to organize proletariats to build a new nation-state. By then, support
to CPC was minimal particularly after the Nationalist regime brutally suppressed CPC
in April 1927, cutting the size of the Party from 60,000 to 10,000 members.
Safeguarding the revolution was Mao: He realistically assessed the essence of the
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澳门大学第四届 21 世纪的公共管理-机遇与挑战国际学术研讨会:中国行政系统与民主化的矛盾及战略化
revolution in China since 1927 and concluded that it was a poor people revolution
more than a proletariat one. He thus advocated the rural-based revolution strategy—to
launch the revolution by establishing bases in rural areas with peasants serving in the
red army.
His strategy was proven effective, with the Provisional Soviet Government
successfully established in Jiangxi and a red army with more than 80,000 soldiers. His
removal from the leadership post in the early 1930s, followed by Nationalist regime’s
military victory, CPC was forced out, launching its 25,000- mile Long March.
Downsized from 80,000-plus to around 30,000 soldiers in an ambush in Hunan with
the likelihood warned by Mao but disregarded by the party leadership, total
dissatisfaction among stakeholders pushed Mao back to power.
Under Mao’s leadership, CPC adopted all available strategies that one could
imagine (such as the arrangement of having thousands of soldiers engaged in farming
to solve food-supply problem) to search for ways to increase the capacity of CPC
during the Sino-Japanese war. As a result, even though the CPC army had only
outmoded rifles and inadequate food supply, it managed to increase its capacity during
the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). After the victory, with successful land reform and
operational grass-root democracy in liberated areas, blended with appropriate mass
education and propaganda and effective united- fronts work, wide popular support to
CPC was generated throughout China, making it possible for CPC with only one
million-plus soldiers to defeat Nationalists’ four- million troops.
After the
establishment of the People’s Republic on 1 October 1949, CPC continued to
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澳门大学第四届 21 世纪的公共管理-机遇与挑战国际学术研讨会:中国行政系统与民主化的矛盾及战略化
strategize until politicization took place since the late 1950s.
In retrospect, CPC’s strategization efforts succeeded in establishing a new
nation-state that cherished fairness, equity, and grass-root democracy. Logic renewal
was the necessary condition—changing from the traditional view that regular troops
(and later the proletariats) were the needed prime factor to overthrow the suppressive
regime to the ―quantumized‖ view that all people, including members of the ruling
class, were related and could become the collective force for enhancing reality
transformation.
The author’s analysis indicates that the underlying logic that caused CPC to adopt
a series of unique strategies to transform China was based on the quantum theory,
which, according to the late E. Sam Overman (1996), ―… posits new ideas about
hidden variables, many worlds and many minds, and the effects of consciousness and
participation on the reality of the world around us‖ (p. 489). The theory is based on
research in quantum mechanics, which shows that a particle of matter is in essence
highly concentrated and localized energy that can be shared with other particles, and
that matters are not discrete units but ―processes‖ of change of energy. Thus, from this
theoretical perspective, everything is connected to everything else while everything is
in the state of becoming rather than being (Becker, 1991).
It should be noted that quantum mechanics was developed during the 1920s, and
thus it was quite unlikely that Mao would have read much about quantum theory.
Nonetheless, his writings show that he had been particularly fond of the Dialectics of
Nature by Fredrick Engels, who had defied reductionism and underscored
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澳门大学第四届 21 世纪的公共管理-机遇与挑战国际学术研讨会:中国行政系统与民主化的矛盾及战略化
connectedness and becoming in nature. The essence of d ialectics also led Mao to think
in quantum terms—that nothing is final or absolute as the whole world is in constant
motion, change, transformation, and/or development in holistically connected
ways—and he eventually wrote his two seminal works: ―On Practice‖ (1991, pp.
282-298) and ―On Contradiction‖ (1991, pp. 299-340). Both works, in addition to his
other writings about holism, connectivity, process of transformation, and synergization,
show that he not only mastered the main themes of quantum theory but also succeeded
in turning them into practical knowledge.
It is with this conception of quantumization that Mao advocated the rural-based
revolution strategy. To Mao and his followers, peasants, as ―beings in becoming‖,
could be educated to become committed revolutionaries sacrificing for collective
interests, while people from all walks of life could become active participants of the
poor people’s revolution. Further, both peasants and working class people, being the
overwhelmingly majority of the Chinese people, could be turned into a collectivity
with solidarity and self-determination to overthrow the handful of ruling elites. Mao ’s
assertion of ―sparks can burn the whole plain‖ reflects his view that individuals are
like quanta or bundles of energy that can be easily connected together (i.e.,
quantumized) to undertake collective actions to inflict massive damages to enemies.
Mao’s conception of the People’s War applied in the War of Resistance against
Japanese Aggression and the subsequent liberation war also reflects his qua ntum
mentality.
The quantum theory, on the one hand, formed the basis for Mao and his followers
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澳门大学第四届 21 世纪的公共管理-机遇与挑战国际学术研讨会:中国行政系统与民主化的矛盾及战略化
to change their dominant logic in accepting the possibility of establishing a new
nation-state. This strategic vision helped unite the Chinese people of different classes
and in different sectors. This united- fronts synergized and in turn facilitated CPC’s
capacitizing—the activities that increased and upgraded a system’s resources and
capabilities to outperform foes or competitors. Through capacitization, the process in
which series of capacitizing take place, CPC succeeded in its revolutionary pursuit.
The CPC had articulated various strategies to create conditions for deterring
atomization of interests and enhancing reality transformation. The author’s analysis
shows that at least one strategization effort—synergization—can be undertaken, of
which revolves around the specific goal of capacitizing.
Synergizing is the cooperative and/or collaborative interactions among individuals
and groups that create an enhanced combined effect which is greater than the sum of
their individual effects. Through synergization, the process in which series of
synergizing take place, CPC, starting out with only around 50-plus members in 1921,
was able to get capacitized—generating a critical mass of military force to
counter-strike the ruling elite and eventually liberated China. Consider the Huaihai
great battle in central plain in late 1948, involving 600,000 CPC’s liberation army and
800,000 well-equipped nationalist soldiers. Behind the scene, more than two million
peasants had participated in auxiliary work, making it possible for the liberation army
to concentrate on combats, crushing its opponents in less than three months. The
underlying regularity is CPC’s turning peasants into altruistic people willing to
sacrifice for collective interests.
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澳门大学第四届 21 世纪的公共管理-机遇与挑战国际学术研讨会:中国行政系统与民主化的矛盾及战略化
The altruistic drive was the key to synergize. At the surface, CPC had effectively
used political education and propaganda to make the masses and CPC members
altruistic. Deep below, as the author’s analysis indicates, the regularity has to do with
(1) turning collective interest protection into the equivalence of safeguarding
individual interests and (2) making the interest safeguarding a process through which
relational and growth needs of the people could also be satisfied. In specific, it was
with land reform that peasants could have their survival need satisfied; it was with
grass-root democracy that the powerless could have their rights protected and their
citizen spirit nurtured; it was with their active engagement in the Sino-Japanese War
and then the liberation war that the masses could survive and also become full- fledged
citizens; and it was with fraternity and military struggles that the suppressed could
have their relational needs satisfied and growth needs met. In short, CPC’s
simultaneously and repeatedly satisfying people’s needs and safeguarding their
interests had helped them become altruistic, optimizing their contribution to CPC’s
success. This regularity has in fact been described by Clayton P. Alderfer’s (1969)
theory of existence, relatedness, and growth needs.
At present, how genuine democratization is to become the equivalence of
upholding CPC leadership, and how citizen interest protection becomes the same thing
as safeguarding individual cadre interests are two key questions for strategization.
With reference to the CPC’s strategization experience, reformers need to turn the
Chinese people, particularly state cadres and CPC members, into altruistic beings
supportive to democratization. Reformers should strategically find ways to create
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澳门大学第四届 21 世纪的公共管理-机遇与挑战国际学术研讨会:中国行政系统与民主化的矛盾及战略化
conditions to simultaneously and repeatedly satisfying their existence, relatedness, and
growth needs. The more favorable conditions they can create, the more people would
be willing to join the democratization pursuit. When a critical mass is formed and
synergization takes place, democratization becomes likely.
One strategizing act that the CPC leadership can undertake is to channel more
resources, particularly talents, into promoting grassroots democracy. As the White
Paper on the Building of Political Democracy in China (2006) reported, ―Among
China’s population of 1.3 billion, over 800 million are rural residents. Self- government
by villagers is a basic system by which the broad masses of the rural people directly
exercise their democratic rights to run their own affairs in accordance with the law and
carry out self-administration, self-education and self-service.‖ Originally established
in the early 1980s, this system has become ―an effective way to develop grassroots
democracy and improve the level of governance in rural China. ‖ If more policy
instruments are introduced, in combination of the villagers’ self- government system, to
nurture citizenship, a foundation for democratization will be built. By the same token,
the urban neighborhood committee is a mass self- government organization of urban
residents in China for self- management, self-education and self- service. These
organizations also provide a platform for developing direct grassroots democracy in
Chinese cities, thus deserving CPC’s strategization attention.
Another strategizing act that the CPC leadership can undertake is to introduce a
new system of distribution of wealth and income to displace the current
work-unit-centered and job-based reward and punishment system, which facilitates
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澳门大学第四届 21 世纪的公共管理-机遇与挑战国际学术研讨会:中国行政系统与民主化的矛盾及战略化
atomization of cadre interests. Such a system can turn protection of collective interests
into the equivalence of safeguarding cadre interests and which does not distort or twist
the market. One innovative arrangement is to set up unit trust funds for all levels and
branches of governments, institutions, and state-owned enterprises, of which will
invest in corporatized businesses, inclusive of state-owned enterprises, joint- ventures,
and multinational corporations. Depending on the outcomes of policy research and
deliberation, certain percentage of the equity of state-owned enterprises would be
transferred to the unit trust funds. Further, all budget savings that work units can
generate, as well as a small portion of the administrative funds originally allocated to
the respective work units and of the remuneration for job posts, could be transferred to
the unit trust funds. Units can be allocated to cadres of work units according to the
proportion of the current budget of the units and then to the individual cadres
according to the proportion of their remuneration received, with the rest shared on
equal basis. Dividends from investment will be distributed to cadres basing on the
quantity of units they have in possession. While bonus units will also be given to
outstanding performers as reward, malperformers and law- and regulation-breakers
will be penalized by confiscation of certain amount trust fund units, depending on the
seriousness of the offences as officially defined.
This innovative arrangement, which can be labeled ―unit trust incentive
mechanism‖, will help turn collective interest protection into the equivalence of
safeguarding cadre interests: cadres would focus on how their performance could
actually induce sustainable economic development, which is possible only in a stable
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澳门大学第四届 21 世纪的公共管理-机遇与挑战国际学术研讨会:中国行政系统与民主化的矛盾及战略化
political environment and a social milieu characterized by justice, equality, and
collaboration. Knowing that what is good for their country and for the locality they
work in is good for them, pro forma and organizational cheating are no longer
necessary, as their performance will be rewarded according to what they have
contributed to socio-economic and political developments of their country. The curse
of atomization of interests would be replaced by the blessing of quantumization of
collective interests. When substantial amount of cadres accept the interest equivalence
thesis,
genuine intra- and inter-departmental,
inter-regional, and inter-sector
collaboration can take place; so will the formation of a high performing p ublic
administration system that does not find democratization threatening.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
Joining the current debate in the field of China studies, this paper argues that the
two extremes of the inevitability and impossibility of democratization are not
necessarily the only two trajectories of political development in China and that China
can develop a genuine democracy that builds on, and in turn nurtures, responsible
citizenship and administratorship, if CPC undertakes strategization. This paper offers
two examples of strategizing actions that may help cope with the fundamental
contradictions between democratization and political monism and reactionary logic of
administration. Political development is never simple and easy. Thus, the CPC would
need to undertake more strategizing actions to ensure success. Finally, it goes without
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澳门大学第四届 21 世纪的公共管理-机遇与挑战国际学术研讨会:中国行政系统与民主化的矛盾及战略化
saying that strategization can be applied in other developing countries’ contexts.
Future research in line of this thinking may yield meaningful findings about the
possible actions that can be taken to not only democratize but to improve the
performance of public administration and to nurture citizenship.
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