How the Communist Party Guided China to Success

[Randy W]

in the NY Times - well worth the read

 

How the Communist Party Guided China to Success

 

What is striking about your book are the case studies, showing how different ministries and commissions actually function.

 

We wanted to show problem-solving, or what’s known as the provision of public goods. For example, how exactly does it create a rural health care system? How does it ensure food safety? These are issues that governments around the world have to deal with. It’s about more than ideology. It’s about how the system actually works.

 

Another unusual feature that we try to explain is how the system of cadres [party officials] functions. In the West, policies are set by law and then carried out by civil servants. In China, policy implementation depends on cadres. They are given clear metrics and goals for achieving things and then told to go do them. Major policy shifts and top-down initiatives are managed through this cadre system, not by making laws.

 

For example?

Xi Jinping’s anticorruption campaign. The Communist Party has expanded and mobilized a parallel disciplinary bureaucracy with great powers to step in and investigate. But it has no clearly defined legal basis. Its operations are directed by party documents and internal directives.

 

. . .

 

Another crucial element is experimentation. This is something we ignore in the West — how unexpectedly flexible China’s deeply bureaucratic system can be. This flexibility has been demonstrated in the ability to set up pilot projects in special economic zones, in local tests — such as for housing reform or bankruptcy in state enterprises. Very difficult measures were regularly tested in pilot projects for several years before national laws were enacted.

 

. . .

 

I’m not sure that the party can achieve everything it’s set out to do. It’s tried to keep a lid on all changes in society, but I doubt this can work over time. There are different lifestyles and forces in society. I’m not sure they can be unified. I’m very skeptical.

 

Also, we shouldn’t forget that hierarchical systems are susceptible to shocks. If Xi Jinping became seriously ill, what would happen to the political system? The system has been tailored to him. Or, if there are military skirmishes, how will the nationalistic forces in society react?

This system is built for expansion, especially economic expansion, and setbacks are very hard to justify. It’s easier in Western systems because you can change the government. But in China you can’t. So the potential for disruption is greater than people imagine.