Power and Control of the Chinese Communist Party

An introduction to China's cadre management

Julia Marinaccio

• Publisher: Passerino
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9788893450485
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Communism, Post-Communism & Socialism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The ebook is an introduction into China's cadre management focusing on the institutional mechanisms and organizational processes that allow the CCP to exert control and power over its state apparatus. By means of selection and appointment, the Party continues to influence career mobility of its agents. Mobility patterns reflect first and foremost the political priorities of the party-state, but also the more comprehensive development goals of the state. Moreover, control over selection and appointment assures a certain degree of coherence within the state apparatus and allows the Party to preserve the existing political structure and its monopoly over claims on power. Julia Marinaccio graduated with a BA and an MA in Chinese Studies from the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Vienna. After her graduation she pursued further studies in Taiwan and completed an additional MA in Political Science at the National Chengchi University in 2013. Upon her return to Austria she embarked on a PhD project on capacity building in the Chinese bureaucracy. She is currently holding a research and teaching position at the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Vienna. Her research focuses on cadre management and environmental governance in China, and social movements in Taiwan.

Taking control of cadres

After having touched upon the more fundamental concepts that underlie cadre management, the central political bodies involved, and its function for the Chinese authoritarian single party-state, we now move on to the intriguing question which underlies this ebook: How does the party-state control its personnel? In other words, which institutional and organizational mechanisms exist to exert control over cadres?

APPOINTMENT: INDICATING STATUS

The Chinese party-state employs two institutional mechanisms to exert control over the appointment of its personnel: nomenklatura and bianzhi (编制). Literature usually refers to nomenklatura as the “main instrument of Party control” (Chan 2004: 703) through which the Party authorizes appointments, removals, and transfers of leading cadres. Nomenklatura is – similar to “cadre” – a Soviet term and is “a list of positions arranged in order of seniority, including a description of the duties of each office” (Brødsgaard 2002: 364). The Chinese term is zhiwu mingcheng biao (职务名称表).

Nomenklatura

Today, the nomenklatura of the COD is composed of two lists: a list with cadre positions under its direct control – Job Title List of Cadres Managed by the Central Committee (Zhonggong zhongyang guanli de ganbu zhiwu 中共中央管理的干部职务) – and a list of cadre positions to be reported to the Central Committee (Xiang zhongyang beian de ganbu zhiwu mingdan/mingcheng biao 向中央备案的干部职务名单/名称表) (Burns 1987: 40). The nomenklatura is organized in sections which include leading positions of the Politburo, the Central Committee, the Military Commission and the Secretariat, the Party's central bureaucracy, political organs such as the NPC and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the State Council and various banks and corporations directly under the State Council, China's overseas representatives and officials, judiciary and procuratorate, mass organizations, local organizations, and institutes of higher education (Chan 2004: 706).

As such, the nomenklatura provides an “authoritative measure” (Burns 1987: 49) of the status of the various organs and organizations in China. Those omitted from the list indicate a lower status, while those on the list suggest a higher level of attention and thus greater relevance for Party officials in Beijing. Thus the number of positions is indicative: the degree of an organization's status can be measured by means of the number of positions within any organization that appears on the nomenklatura (ibid. 49). As will be shown below, the distribution of authority over appointment manifests a fundamental struggle in the Chinese polity over time. Its real manifestation is thus an indicator on the relative strength of center versus local governments, and of Party versus the government.

Earlier research in the field of cadre management suggests that the nomenklatura system was first introduced during the Yan'an era “in order to put into practice the principle of Party control of cadres (dang guan ganbu 党管干部)” (Kou et al. 2014: 153-54) and reformulated during the “regularization” (Vogel 1967) efforts in the 1950s (Manion 1985: 205; Burns 1987: 37). Despite continuous reforms of the system, informal practices such as favoritism and nepotism remain. [1]

Burns (Burns 1987: 50) identified the intrinsic link between the nomenklatura system and patron-client relations, as it encourages their development. Moreover, it “institutionalizes patronage, and indicates to clients where they should look for support.”

Before the administrative and economic reforms of the 1980s, Party committees exercised formal authority over senior personnel appointments, removals, and transfers two levels down the administrative hierarchy. The Central Committee in Beijing approved all relevant personnel changes at central, provincial, and prefectural level. Overlaps existed between central and local level, as for example senior positions at the prefecture level appeared also on the nomenklatura of the Central Party Committee and the various provincial party committees (Burns 1989: ix).

It is generally known that formal cadre management – like most of the other institutional arrangements that usually knit a state together – was dismantled during the Cultural Revolution. According to Burns (1987: 37) the Chinese press did not even mention the COD between 1967 and 1972. Its incumbent head, An Ziwen (安子文), was branded a “counter-revolutionary revisionist” and fell in late 1967 (Manion 1985: 205). Only in 1975 did the newspaper begin to refer to Guo Yufeng as a “responsible person” (Manion 1985: 205). Responsible person or in Chinese fuzeren (负责人) was a term that usually referred to cadres in leadership positions.

Even though ideology has always played a role in the history of the PRC, the relative importance of ideology as compared with technocracy has changed in different periods (see Li 1994; Joel 2009). During the Cultural Revolution, leadership changes were volatile and politically charged. In addition to purges and the “de-institutionalization of organizational work” (Burns 1987: 37), the Cultural Revolution generated newly recruited and promoted leaders at all levels, whose credentials were mostly political, rather than being based on professional qualification and performance. After the turmoil of these years, the Chinese leadership moved on to re-regularize and re-institutionalize the country. In doing so, it concentrated on reshuffling its cadres corps by removing (mainly by retiring) those who had been recruited or rehabilitating those who had been demoted during the Cultural Revolution. In 1980, the nomenklatura system was reinstalled and the COD promulgated a list with cadre positions. In this document, the Party reaffirmed the two-levels down principle, but extended authority to the so called party core group (dangzu 党组) of central ministries, commissions, and bureaus. These party core groups were appointed by central party officials and existed next to the Party committees (Burns 1987: 37).

With the administrative reforms embarked upon in 1984, authority over leadership positions was parceled out to the various party committees down the political administrative system. The number of posts directly controlled by the Center was drastically reduced – according to Burns (ibid. 38), by 87 percent – by means of replacing the two-levels down principle in leadership appointments with a one-level down principle. The COD's authority was divided in cadre positions that were under its direct control and those that had to be reported to the Central Committee (see discussion above). While the Central Committee managed the ministerial and provincial officials, office-level appointments were delegated to the ministries and provinces.

This step was in line with the party-state's general (economic) reform agenda, which aimed to decentralize authority down to the local level. The new concept was grounded in the understanding that collaboration should guide central-local relations, rather than forcing one measures on diverse economic and cultural settings, as had been the case previously. The goal was to make the center more sensitive to local needs, and spur economic reforms at the local level.

Other reform efforts followed under the incumbent leadership of Zhao Ziyang (赵紫阳) and Hu Yaobang (胡耀邦), who attempted to introduce a civil service system by introducing a clearer institutional separation between Party and government (at least to a degree they thought that would be acceptable for the Party). In his attempt to establish a less politicized civil service, Zhao transferred the management of leading non-Party positions at various universities, economic enterprises, and other service units from the job title list of the COD to the Ministry of Personnel. Zhao's reform came with the rise of social and political movements, which intensified towards the end of the 1980s and peaked in the students' protests in 1989. After the conservatives in China's central government under the leadership of veteran Deng Xiaoping (邓小平) had asserted themsel...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Power and Control of the Chinese Communist Party
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Cadres in China
• Power relations inside the Party-state
• Taking control of cadres
• Conclusion
• References
• Credits