If according to Zheng there is a certain level of institutionalization going on, Joseph Fewsmith somehow disagrees on this point. In Chapter 2, he examines the reform of the cadre system. After the Cultural Revolution, Beijing has attempted to reestablish and modernize the cadre system. Many younger and better-educated cadres were promoted. While many scholars view this reform as “regularization” or “institutionalization” of elite management, Fewsmith argues that there are a series of tensions that make the system behave in an irrational fashion in Weberian sense. The first tension results from a vertical control system and a horizontal coordination system. The rather unconstrained power of local party heads induces personalism in the system, encouraging cadres to be “hyper-responsive to their immediate supervisors at the expense of other interests.” Another tension falls between upper-level assignments and local expectations. The third problem of the cadre system is multiple policy goals from higher-ups which local cadres find difficult to align with, leading to selective policy implementation, thus frustrating a number of reform initiatives. In conclusion, the author believes that “cadres” are not Weberian “administrators”. The efforts to professionalize the bureau-cracy are subversive of party control.
Another important aspect of the Chinese system is the state-business relationship. Kjeld Erik Brodsgaard deals with this aspect in Chapter 3 by exploring the reform of one important group of Chinese political elite — the supermanagers in the state-owned companies. Those companies are huge in regard to manpower, assets, and annual turnover. The managers of those companies have gained autonomy in business operations and become powerful enough to generate capital. The CEOs are part of a new corporate elite who enjoy high salaries and fringe benefits. They are so powerful that they could be able to block state initiatives. They are part of the party-state cadre system, ranking at vice-ministerial or even full ministerial level. The Party’s central organization department is in charge of their appointment, promotion, or dismissal. One way to control the supermanagers is rotation, transferring them from one leadership position to another, which integrates them into the power system and gives them work experiences across various sectors, and most importantly, form an iron triangle of party, state, and business. The supermanager group thus constitutes a powerful interest group in the political system. A number of reforms have been introduced to constrain the social impact of the rising class of supermanagers. The long-term effects of such reforms remain to be seen.
China’s somewhat unique way of political economic change has not only inspired a great amount of empirical studies, but also attracted interests from political theorists who attempt to make sense of the normative meaning of China’s non-democratic development. Based on a critical review of Danial Bell’s book on China model, Baogang He takes efforts to reconcile political meritocracy and democracy. Empirically, the chapter presents several cases of political experiments, in which local officials tried to integrate meritocratic procedures with electoral competitions in local elite recruitments or promotions. Conceptually, the author believes China’s experiments can be viewed as authoritarian meritocracy with some democratic characteristics. Differing from a democratic perspective of legitimacy which requires popular sovereignty, He finds that the Chinese system has a tradition to seek mixed sources of legitimacy. The rulers’ right to govern is not only based on the mandate of heaven, but also on their performance and virtue, and they must be subject to people’s approval, or at least meet people’s demands.
If there is still debate on how much the Chinese political system has been changed, few would disagree that there have been fundamental changes in the Chinese society during the reform era. Our second cluster deals with public attitudes and state responses. Public evaluation of public policies is related to regime legitimacy. A high satisfaction of policies contributes to social and political stability, and therefore reinforces legitimacy. In Chapter 5, Wenfang Tang and Dong Yu attempt to explore public satisfaction of governmental policies among Chinese urban residents. Their analyses are based on multi-rounds of telephone survey in ten Chinese cities. They find issues closely related to people’s everyday life, such as food safety, price, housing, etc., usually have a lower level of public satisfaction. In contrast, the most satisfied policies are those relatively far away from daily life, like ethnic harmony, national security and foreign policy. The chapter goes further to trace historical trend of satisfaction levels with data covering the period from May 1987 to October 2013. After a dramatic decline in May 1989, satisfaction levels of all policy issues rebounded. Except clean governance, all other issues have been on the ascending curve in recent years, showing Chinese government has won popularity among citizens. Based on regression analyses, the authors argue that the sources of policy satisfaction include regional variance, media access, and socioeconomic status. Furthermore, policy satisfaction affects people’s modes of political action. The dissatisfied tend to either take radical actions or do nothing.
China has carried out elections in villages and urban residential communities for about 30 years. Wei Shan and Wenfang Tang trace changes in socio-demographic factors and political attitudes of voters in community elections in Chapter 6. They attempt to answer three questions: Who vote? Why vote? What are the consequences of voting? Using multiple national random surveys conducted from 1993 to 2013, they find those elections had provided a meaningful and important channel for Chinese people to participate in politics until recent years. Educated and politically confident people were more likely to vote or participate in electoral campaigns. Voters are not motivated to participate by democratic values, but by practical reasons, for instance, punishing corrupt officials. Voting or involvement in campaign activities increases satisfaction with the local government and with one’s own life. Those who stay away from elections show more inclination to express their views by protesting activities than those who take part in voting and campaigns. After around 2008, all these patterns have disappeared due to stronger state intervention and therefore a decline in competitiveness. Political contestation in villages and residential communities has produced very little dynamics for political reform of the entire system.
Developmentalism is the major model of economic and social development in Japan and the East Asian “Little Tigers.” Apparently, China has been following other East Asian societies in terms of social policy. Litao Zhao finds in Chapter 7, however, China’s shift to the welfare deepening trajectory has been complicated by the country’s other dimension of transition: from a central-planned economy to a market-oriented one. The author conceptualizes China’s approach as “fragmented developmentalism,” which can be seen as a variant of developmentalism. Four features of the Chinese system, fragmented bureaucracy, decentralization, market transition, and the household registration system, combinedly make the model of fragmented developmentalism. This fragmented system has brought about income inequality, environmental pollution, unequal pension and healthcare, as well as declining social trust and morality. The author suggests that Chinese government should adopt a more integrated approach to reform the welfare regime, establishing nation-level redistribution mechanisms to make the system more equal.
In Chapter 8, Jiwei Qian reviews the development programs for poverty reduction in rural China. Forty years of efforts have made substantial achievements. The number of poor in the country has been cut by over half even when the poverty line has been rising up. According to the author, the development programs have experienced several phases, and in different phases, the programs were aimed to address different reasons for poverty. Later development programs also dealt with problems produced in