Political Reform in Post-Mao China: Democracy and Bureaucracy in a Leninist State

By Barrett L. McCormick

After the death of Mao, the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party embarked on a series of ambitious political reforms. Barrett L. McCormick develops a theory of Leninist states to explore the prospects for these reforms. He finds that, although the Chinese people have made significant economic and political gains, the basic contours of the state remain unchanged, and as events in June 1989 clearly showed, reform has not diminished the state’s ability to impose its prerogatives on society.
 
Drawing on Weber’s political sociology, McCormick argues that patronage and corruption are integral aspects of Leninist rulership. Reformers have attempted to promote democracy and law and to fight corruption, but when they attempt to implement their programs through traditional hierarchical Leninist institutions, lower-level cadres have been able to utilize patronage networks to blunt the impact of reform and protect their personal agendas. In his case studies of the legal system, the people’s congress, and party rectification, McCormick points up these obstacles to progressive change and assesses the extent to which reformers’ goals have been realized. He shows that, despite the often radical nature of the reform movements, the principal dimensions of the Leninist system—one party rule, state domination of the economy, a confining ideology—remain largely intact. These findings will be of interest to China specialists as well as students of comparative communism and Leninist states. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Mar 29, 2024
• ISBN: 9780520310063

Barrett L. McCormick

Barrett L. McCormick is Professor of Political Science at Marquette University.

Book preview

Political Reform in

Post-Mao China

Political Reform in Post-Mao China

Democracy and

Bureaucracy in a Leninist State

Barrett L. McCormick

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley • Los Angeles • Oxford

University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.

Oxford, England

© 1990 by

The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McCormick, Barrett L.

Political reform in post-Mao China: democracy and bureaucracy in

a Leninist state I Barrett L. McCormick.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 0-520-06765-7 (alk. paper)

1. China—Politics and government—1976- 2. China—Economic

policy—1976- 3. Communist state. I. Title.

JQ1502.M34 1990

951.05'7—dc20 89-20440

CIP

Printed in the United States of America 123456789

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. @™

for democracy

Contents

Contents

Preface

Introduction

CHAPTER ONE The Shanghai Commune and the Nanjing Incident

CHAPTER TWO Patrimonial Rulership in China’s Leninist State

CHAPTER THREE Strengthening Socialist Law

CHAPTER FOUR Elections to Local People’s Congresses

CHAPTER FIVE Party Rectification

Conclusion

Select Bibliography

Index

Preface

To explore the prospects for reform in China, I have developed in this book a theory of Leninist states. Theories of the state are by now prevalent in the study of comparative politics. Their chief attraction is that they allow for the autonomy of politics. Politics is not just a reflection of economics, is not subject to the dictates of economic modernization, is not just class struggle, and is not just a set of cultural values enacted in a public sphere. Politics, political leaders, and political institutions are connected to these spheres and more, but they also respond to their own imperatives.

It is doubly attractive to apply theories of the state to the most autonomous type of state, a Leninist state. By autonomous I mean that Leninist states tend to respond to their own needs and are relatively able to avoid being constrained by social demands. In their first decades, the Chinese and Soviet Leninist states were able to mount cataclysmic revolutions from above and were often dominated by individual leaders’ cults of personality. More recently, individual leaders have been more constrained by state institutions, but Leninist state institutions have maintained the autonomy of the state and are also relatively able to escape social constraints.

Part of the work of this book has been broadly comparative, to analyze what makes Leninist states different from other kinds of states. It is ironic that most of the literature on the autonomy of states has been written about liberal-capitalist states, which in comparative terms are surrounded by a dense and active civil society and hence are among the most constrained states. In contrast, the comprehensive vertical hierarchies of Leninist state institutions constrain and confine society, leaving state leaders and state institutions relatively free to respond to their own agendas.

I have also analyzed what constitutes a Leninist state and have developed an argument about the nature of Leninist rulership that helps to explain the autonomy of Leninist institutions. In this I have drawn most of my inspiration from Max Weber’s ideal types and, in particular, his concept of patrimonial rulership. I argue that the structure of Chinese units makes people personally dependent on their leadership and inhibits the autonomy of society. At the same time, patrimonial state bureaucracy dilutes official purposes and resists reforms imposed from above. In discussing Leninist rulership, I have tried to make frequent references to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to make this book as comparative as possible.

I have also endeavored to build an argument that would make sense to Chinese intellectuals. To accomplish this, I have tried to comprehend Chinese understandings and incorporate them into my argument. I have searched for kindred understandings, particularly from Eastern Europeans. I have tried to cast these arguments in the terms and traditions of Western social science and have therefore used a language that is not readily comprehensible. Nonetheless, I still hope that the basic argument, stripped of its jargon, will make sense to Chinese, although most would reject major points.

The tension in this analysis comes from two sources. First, while Leninist states may dominate society, they have never completely absorbed or eliminated society. Instead, decades of violence and coercion, limited economic achievements, and the widespread use of official position for private gain have alienated society from the Chinese, East European, and Russian states. In ordinary times the state may be able to suppress and mask these tensions, but in moments of crisis like those described in chapter 1 or the crisis of the spring of 1989, they give stark testimony to the depth of conflict between the state and society. While the existence of a deep conflict between state and society is a fundamental premise of my argument, I have analyzed only how society is shaped and limited by Leninist rulership. There is certainly more to Chinese society than can be seen through an analysis of the Chinese state, but it is beyond the scope of this work to provide an autonomous explanation of Chinese society.

The second source of tension in my analysis comes from the attempt of reformers to restructure the Chinese state. After Mao died, many leaders saw the need for radical reforms to bridge the gap between state and society. They saw that other forms of rulership might provide the state with more security and make the state more effective. They attempted to make the state more inclusive and more rational-legal. They did not attempt to create a Western-style democracy, but they did seek to maintain the leading role of the Party. This effort brought reformers into conflict with Leninist state institutions. Patrimonial networks have been able to passively resist and dilute the reformers’ intentions. Moreover, as long as the reformers are committed to maintaining Party leadership, their own authority depends on the same hierarchies that generate this resistance. Consequently, political reforms in post-Mao China have failed to live up to the reformers’ hopes or expectations.

Despite the reformers’ intention to maintain the Party’s leading role, there is still an important element of democratization in these reforms. First, despite the limits to reforms, reformers created a more open, more transparent, more lawful, and more humane government. This counts as an important step toward democracy. Nor is Westernstyle democracy the only conceivable form of democracy. Second, society has gained more autonomy, and in the more open atmosphere many intellectuals have pushed past the reformers’ limited aims to discuss still more far-reaching reforms.

The brutal violence used against the people of Beijing and other Chinese cities in June 1989 demonstrated that the conflict between state and society has not yet been resolved. The reforms have so far failed to provide an institutional mechanism that can effectively mediate between state and society. Instead, when faced with broadly supported demands for more democracy, state power holders responded with a hail of gunfire and a wave of arrests.

The future is difficult to foresee. A decade of reform has left the Party in worse political shape than it was at the end of the Cultural Revolution. The leadership is isolated and discredited. Substantial sectors of society are now likely to reject not just this leadership and its policies but the Party and socialism as well. There will be tremendous pressure, not just to maintain the pace of economic reforms, but also to return to open and inclusive political reforms. At the same time, many in the Party leadership will accurately perceive that the gap between state and society will be harder to bridge now than it would have been before and that a return to openness will expose the Party to greater risks than it did before. Neither repression nor reform is likely to solve the Party’s difficulties.

One of the most important conclusions to this analysis is that Leninist states are open only to a limited range of transformations. Reformers have found it very difficult to remold existing institutions to meet the demands of restructured economies or more autonomous societies. The alternatives may not be as stark as the contrast between the formal end of party leadership in Hungary and the repression in China, but reformers have yet to effect a stable compromise between recalcitrant institutions and alienated societies. What can or could have been accomplished in China and other reforming Leninist states will remain an open question that scholars can ponder for years to come.

I have many people to thank for their help in the making of this book. I encountered Guenther Roth early in my career, and he helped me to get started on Weber as well as social science and then later provided critical advice and support. Once in Madison, I became the student of Edward Friedman, and his brilliant mind and acute perception of Chinese perspectives have provided inspiration ever since. My ideas about the role of the state in China were developed by my contact with Maurice Meisner. Others on the faculty in Madison who were particularly stimulating include Booth Fowler, Murray Edelman, and Melvin Croan. Chen Gwang-tsai and Clara Sun of the Chinese Languages and Literature Department in Madison helped me to begin communicating with Chinese people. Some of my fellow students in Madison deserve special mention, including Steve McDougal, Steve Schier, and Isabel Souza. The next stage of this project found me at Nanjing University. Professor Hu Fuming was very kind to me, although he would repudiate most of my book, as were and as would several Chinese classmates. Many of the foreigners then at Nanjing University helped me to sift through an intensely rich experience, but I want to thank in particular Katie Lynch, Maryruth Coleman, Jenny Louie, Kam Louie, and Elizabeth Perry. Elizabeth Perry continued to provide advice and useful criticism during the next stage of the work, which was at the University of Washington. At that time Kent Guy was also very helpful, as were Dan Chirot and Jack Dahl. During this time, I received encouragement from Tsou Tang and help from Mike Lampton, who perhaps unintentionally, but nonetheless painstakingly, taught me much about writing. Andrew Nathan offered useful criticism of chapter 4. Connie Squires Meany and Jean Oi organized panels where my thoughts could be refined and offered their own excellent suggestions. During the final stage of making this book, I have found a supportive environment at Marquette. I want to thank the Bradley Institute for its support for one summer. Jack Johannes and Jim Rhodes both deserve special mention. Rich Friman has helped me in more ways than he knows and has my respect and gratitude. I also want to thank my students at Marquette, who have helped me to understand China. I thank the anonymous readers for the University of California Press for their helpful criticisms. Last but not least, I thank Amy Klatzkin and Gladys Castor for their excellent editing.

My family has kept me on track through thick and thin. My parents, Ralph and Mary Lou McCormick, have encouraged and inspired me. Connie Compton, though far away, has helped me along. Spencer McCormick gives me joy. Leslie Spencer-Herrera gave more than I could ask for at every stage of this book and is as glad as I am to see it finished.

Introduction

Since the death of Mao the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party has embarked on a series of ambitious reforms. In December 1978 the historic Third Plenum of the Eleventh Party Central Committee declared that the main focus of the Party’s work should shift from class struggle to the Four Modernizations. Subsequent economic reforms have given more power to managers in state enterprises, facilitated the development of collective and private enterprises, expanded the use of markets, shifted from planning outputs toward indicative planning, and promoted profits and bonuses as the primary incentives for factories and workers. Economic reforms have been the most extensive and successful in rural China. The once hailed communes have been dismantled, and land has been contracted to individual families. Some families have been encouraged to specialize in producing commodities. Markets have been reestablished, even for sensitive commodities like grain, and all peasants have been encouraged to work hard and get rich. The result has been a few record harvests and historic increases in rural incomes. Reforms to the urban economy have been more incremental and more difficult to implement and have had more mixed results, but they are nonetheless very significant. Steps have been taken toward establishing markets for credit and labor and toward making firms responsible for their own profits and losses. Particularly in coastal areas, China’s economy is now significantly more open to the world economy. While inflation is currently a pressing problem, prices of many goods are no longer established by the state.

To facilitate economic reform and to some extent as an end in itself, the Party has also initiated a series of political reforms. Chinese politics is now more open and inclusive. Many of those condemned as counterrevolutionaries in previous political campaigns have been exonerated. After being excoriated in the Cultural Revolution, intellectuals and technical experts have been officially declared members of the working class. The range of permissible public debate is much broader, and culture is more lively, even if the Party has attacked bourgeois liberalization and spiritual pollution. The Party has reestablished and strengthened representative institutions such as the people’s congresses and has promulgated many new laws. The Party has also moved to improve state and Party administrative capacity through a series of administrative reforms and by decreasing the age and increasing the educational standing of personnel.

All of this might indicate that the nature of the Chinese state is being fundamentally transformed. The reforms seem to suggest the strengthening of horizontal relationships at lower levels vis-à-vis the leading role of the Party. Considerable evidence can be marshaled to support this interpretation. The Party’s new constitution indicates that the Party is to operate within legal limits. It states: The Party must conduct its activities within the limits permitted by the [state] Constitution and the laws of the state.1 The promotion and use of contracts in areas as diverse as agriculture and public security is evidence of the new strength of horizontal relationships. The wider range of opinion, new institutions like the people’s congresses, and greater freedom for mass organizations such as unions to pursue the interests of their constituency all indicate a revitalized civil society.

Leading scholars have summarized these developments as the transformation of a totalitarian system into an authoritarian one. Michel Oksenberg and Richard Bush state: In 1972, totalitarian revolutionaries ruled the nation; by 1982 China’s rulers had become authoritarian reformers.2 Harry Harding labels the new system a consultative authoritarian regime.3 Tang Tsou makes a careful theoretical argument, defining totalitarian in terms of a continuum, with greater totalitarian-ness indicating the extension of state functions into civil society. He argues persuasively that for most of the twentieth century the role of the Chinese state grew and that the current retreat of politics reverses that trend.4

This terminology succeeds in calling attention to very real changes that have occurred within China; but to define the limits of change or to compare China with other states, we need to think very carefully about the institutional structure of China’s Leninist state. The scholars cited above agree that there has been only limited change in China’s institutions. Oksenberg and Bush write that the major instruments of totalitarian rule have been weakened but not eliminated.5 Harding writes that much of the basic structure of late Maoist China remains intact.6 Tang Tsou states that the limits to change are defined by the four fundamental principles, of which the most basic is the leadership of the Party.7 Besides the Party there are still secret police, a comprehensive network of neighborhood and village organizations, and a system of files to keep watch on all citizens; and the state still owns the major means of production and communication. I agree with Chalmers Johnson, who argues that China is not just a large, developing country that happens to be ruled by a Communist party. Instead, these institutions are part of a Leninist state that is not at all the same as other kinds of states.8

The reforms can be viewed as a Leninist revival as well as liberalization or relaxation. The reforms may somewhat decrease the autonomy of China’s Leninist state, but they are nonetheless intended to increase its capacity to rule. Before drawing conclusions about the direction of change in China, it is important to consider the past. The Cultural Revolution and the overall direction of Mao’s politics were not only a catastrophe for society but also a serious threat to the state. Mao created an extremely autonomous state that could arbitrarily intervene in any sphere of social life. Wang Xizhe, a leader of China’s unofficial democrats, argues that Mao initiated the Cultural Revolution precisely because he was not satisfied that the party/state set up after the model of Stalinism was authoritarian enough.9 Au tonomy was purchased at a high price, however. The essentially charismatic nature of Mao’s politics and the legitimation of attacks on institutions and procedures meant that there were few hard or fast rules for leaders or followers. Campaigns, interventions, arrests, and purges could create a climate of fear and conformity, but without rules and institutions central authority could be maintained only through more campaigns, interventions, arrests, and purges. Even then each successive campaign further undermined the state’s administrative capacity. The power of modern states is rooted in part in their monopoly of the legitimate means of violence—which campaigns tended to grant to any self-proclaimed revolutionary. It is rooted also in the development of a rational-legal state bureaucracy that will consistently conduct administration according to rules and routines established by political authorities. Campaigns debilitated rules and routines, increasing the ability of cadres at all levels to respond to their personal agendas and diminishing supervision from above or below. Consequently, the state gained the ability to intervene anywhere and anytime, but central authorities lost the ability to guide the use of that power.

Viewed in these terms, the campaign to strengthen laws and institutions can be seen as an attempt by the Party center to increase its administrative capacity. Two of the most consistent themes of the post-Mao Chinese press have been exposés of corrupt cadres and Party organizations and criticisms of lower levels for failing to implement the Party center’s policies. These criticisms suggest that the Cultural Revolution’s attack on institutional authority left in its wake pervasive networks of informal and personal authority, which are very difficult for central authorities to penetrate or control. Initiatives from the Party center, such as the Party’s new constitution, new Party rules, the reestablishment of a hierarchy of discipline and inspection committees, and the recent campaign for Party rectification, can be viewed as means of combatting the general diffusion of authority. Even reforms such as promoting the use of technical experts in enterprises can be seen as means of binding organizations to their formal purposes and limiting the ability of lower-level cadres to use them for private purposes.

While reform may reduce the Party’s autonomy, the Party has no intention of abandoning its leading role. Party spokesmen have emphatically rejected any intention of creating a Western-style democracy and continue to insist that the Party has a special capacity to lead society in a transition to socialism and therefore deserves exclusive privileges. Even though the Party has retreated from the extremes of the Cultural Revolution, it still devotes tremendous energy to defining ideology and encouraging the study of its current line. It continues to occupy an exclusive organizational sphere. The reform program has strengthened the Party’s grass-roots organization in urban neighborhoods, and the neighborhood committees still form the foundation of an extensive surveillance system. While the central leadership now utilizes institutions such as the people’s congresses and regularly consults with non-Party personages on political events, there can be no doubt that it maintains a close monopoly on policy formation. The mass organizations have greater freedom to voice the demands of their constituents, but there is little evidence of genuinely autonomous interest groups. Harro Von Senger writes:

The Party does not want to relinquish, but merely refine and rationalize its leadership position. The main force is to be engaged, as it were, to steer the ship. But for the ship’s maintenance and operation auxiliary forces are employed. … Thus the democratization and legalization of life in the P.R.C. remain within the broad limits which in the last resort are set by the political leadership of the CCP.¹⁰

The Party’s leading role makes China’s Leninist state different from other authoritarian states. A wide range of states can be considered authoritarian, including the former regime of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, South Korea’s developmental capitalism, Mexico’s once successful corporatism, and personal rulership in Africa. While there are similarities among these states, their different institutional structures and different relationships between state and society indicate fundamentally different prospects. Leninist states penetrate civil society and the economy more thoroughly. This gives the state a tremendous ability to co-opt and promote collaboration. Civil society in a Leninist state has considerably less autonomy than in other kinds of states and is less able to organize significant pressure for change. To justify their leading role, Leninist parties must maintain at least the pretense of charismatic legitimacy, which places limits on ideological reform. This undercuts the prospects for promoting the rule of law and the development of rational-legal organization. In turn, the inability of society to communicate with the state through legal chan

neis promotes the use of informal, particularistic, and corrupt channels. Reforms from above, although intended to address these problems, tend to reinforce the structures that create them. Despite relaxation or liberalization, Chinese institutions remain distinctively Leninist and will continue to influence the course of reform.

I will examine this theoretical argument in detail for the rest of this introduction. Chapter 1 will examine the nature of the relationship between state and society in China by looking at two instances of open conflict between state and society: the attempt to establish a commune in Shanghai in 1967 and the abortive demonstration against the so-called Gang of Four in Nanjing in 1976. This will illustrate that while Leninist states are generally able to limit the expression of social interests, such limitation is not the same as creating a mass of atomized individuals. To the contrary, the Cultural Revolution’s violent attack on existing social norms intensified the isolation of the state from society and the general weakening of the state. Chapter 2 will examine how interests are expressed within the confines of Leninist organization. I will argue that when Leninist states attempt to build comprehensive organization to transform society and also strictly limit the ability of that organization to respond to day- to-day problems, individuals inevitably seek personal and informal solutions, thereby creating patronage networks that balance the state’s formal organization. In chapter 3 I will show how the creation of criminal codes and the strengthening of legal procedures in criminal matters are primarily intended to strengthen the state’s ability to control social order and have resulted in only the limited ability of individuals to assert rights against the state. In chapter 4 I will show how, despite various democratizing reforms, the revived people’s congresses still serve the Party center’s definition of democracy and are consequently co-opted into the existing political pattern of contrasting patrimonial and rational-legal organization. In chapter 5, using the recent round of Party rectification as an example, I will discuss how existing institutions make it difficult to reform the Party, which is itself the main obstacle to reform.

THE LENINIST STATE

The argument of this book is based on two central ideas. First, Leninist states are relatively autonomous of society. In the words of Leszek Kołakowski, Leninist states begin with the progressive destruction of civil society and the absorption of all forms of social life by the state.11 The state’s penetration of society—the Party’s presence in all formal organizations, its control of mass media, its commanding presence in the economy—becomes the main factor limiting change. Second, to examine the nature of this limit, I will use Max Weber’s three ideal types of rulership: rational-legal rulership, traditional or patrimonial rulership, and charismatic rulership. The relationship of a Leninist state to society establishes a basic pattern of authority. Leninist states claim charismatic legitimacy and attempt to build rational-legal institutions from the top down. In practice, the Party’s comprehensive penetration of society results in extensive patron-client networks, or patrimonial rulership, which undermine the state’s ideological legitimacy and economic efficiency. As long as the Party seeks to maintain its leading role, attempts to remedy this problem will feature more charismatic political campaigns and further attempts to build rationallegal authority from the top down. Charismatic movements have not provided a basis for solving day-to-day problems and have had tragic social costs. Further attempts to build rational-legal authority from the top down have had only limited success and have had the unintended result of strengthening patrimonial networks. Leninist states change but tend to remain within the broad patterns of Leninist politics.

What characterizes a Leninist state? First, state organization thoroughly penetrates society. Usually one of the first steps in establishing a Leninist state is to extend political organization from a single center outward to include all political parties, unions, professional associations, firms, and service organizations. This organization is so comprehensive that it reaches all neighborhoods and villages. In turn, the autonomy of civil society is severely restricted. Second, the state has a hegemonic role in the economy. In some Leninist states this is accomplished through state ownership of nearly all significant economic organizations and through command-style economic planning. Even those Leninist states that have adopted market socialism have retained a degree of economic authority far surpassing that in other authoritarian states. This results in political domination of economics. In particular, social stratification is based more on political status than economic class. Third, Leninist states use their extensive organi zation to supervise public speech. They propagate a relatively formal ideology that seeks to justify the Party’s leading role in society. This requires claiming that the Party has unique charismatic virtues, such as a scientific understanding of the future, the ability to bring about a utopia eventually, the lack of any selfish interest, and the ability to represent all progressive classes, or good people. They may tolerate more or less dissent, but they always maintain boundaries. In addition, Leninist states practice extensive supervision of personnel matters. Higher levels supervise promotions and appointments at lower levels in political, social, and economic organization. Finally, Leninist states maintain an extensive system of secret police coupled with an extensive system of files or dossiers on individual citizens.12

There are two fundamental assertions underlying the use of the state as a basic unit of analysis. First, politics is or can be a relatively autonomous sphere of human activity. This is not particularly controversial from the vantage of mainstream American political science, and contemporary Western Marxism has followed arguments advanced by Lenin, Gramsci, Mao, and Poulantzas among many others and rejected strict economic determinism.13 Second, the state can be a relatively autonomous actor. This argument is more controversial, whether examined from a pluralist perspective that views the output of government as determined largely by the input of autonomous interest groups or from a Marxist perspective that reduces the state to an intermediary between ruling and ruled classes.14 In contrast to these positions, the last two decades have produced a substantial literature arguing that the state needs to be considered an independent variable.15

The argument to follow is not that all states should be seen as independent actors, but that certain kinds of states have far more autonomy than others.