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Political forces
Feb 9th 2004
From the Economist Intelligence Unit
Source: Country ViewsWire
The CCP
In June 2002 the CCP had 66.4m members, 5.2% of the total population, making it the largest political party in the world. Only 11.6m (17.5%) were women; 4.1m (6.2%) were from ethnic minorities. The membership is relatively old (77.7% of members are over 35), but 75% of the 11.9m new members recruited in 1997-2002 were under the age of 35, and 78.6% of the new members had received education at high-school level or above, which underlines the growing technocratic basis of the CCP elite. By contrast, only 52.5% of the general membership have received high-school education. The party claims that women accounted for 25.4% of new recruits in 1997-2002. Joining the party traditionally offered the promise of both material and professional benefits, and is still important for ambitious government officials. For the rest of the population, however, the attractions of party membership are fading as the CCP loses the dominance in everyday life that it previously enjoyed.
The CCP's structure parallels and supervises that of the government and the legislature. Its main decision-making body is the central committee. Currently having 198 full members and 158 alternate members, the central committee meets in plenary session about twice a year. In the interim most of its power is vested in the politburo, which currently has 24 members. Above the politburo stands the politburo standing committee (PSC), the most powerful political institution in China, which currently has nine members. Membership of the central committee, the politburo and the PSC are decided upon at the CCP's national congress, which is held every five years, normally in the months preceding the first session of a new NPC. The most recent CCP National Congress, the 16th, was held in November 2002.
Party secretariats and commissions
The apparently clear-cut line of pyramidal control within the CCP is complicated by its various secretariats and commissions, as well as issue-based leading committees. The general secretary is the party leader, following the abolition in 1980 of the post of chairman, and has the power to convene politburo meetings. The central secretariat handles the day-to-day business of the party. The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, with responsibility for the internal discipline of the party—and hence managing a strong network of informers, spies and personnel files—is a particularly powerful body. Apart from the PSC, the work of the government is co-ordinated through leading groups, which bring together senior officials to formulate policy on particular issues. China thus has leading groups on foreign affairs and Taiwan.
Corruption among officials
Immediately after the government had embarked on a programme of economic reform in 1978, the legitimacy of the CCP rose as the standard of living of ordinary people improved rapidly. Since then, the popularity of the party has faltered. Endemic official corruption has been a major cause of the party's popularity woes. In recent years the resultant discontent has been exacerbated by economic changes that have led incomes in rural areas to stagnate, and by government attempts to reform SOEs that have resulted in large numbers of lay-offs. In an example of this disgruntlement, in March 2002 thousands of former state workers took to the streets of two cities in China's north-east, complaining about the non-payment of welfare, income and severance benefits, and the enrichment of party officials. These were perhaps the largest worker-initiated protests in the history of the PRC. (Although involving some workers, the momentum for the huge 1989 protests had been provided by students.)
Such social discontent clearly represents a serious challenge to CCP power. Officials have been working to rationalise pension, unemployment and medical care systems, but the task is both hugely complex and expensive, and so far they have made little more than a start. The government has also been trying to stamp out graft. Orders to officials to refrain from many kinds of economic activity are frequently reiterated. People who fail to meet standards of integrity are, in theory, excluded both from CCP membership and from employment as officials—the party claims that 124,000 members were expelled in 1997-2002. More senior officials are being convicted of graft, and are being subjected to seemingly ever more serious punishments: in September 2000 the vice-chairman of the NPC, Cheng Kejie, was executed after being found guilty of corruption. (Although not all executions are corruption-related, according to Amnesty International, a UK-based human rights watchdog, at least 1,060 people were executed in China in 2002, almost 70% of the 1,526 executions worldwide known to Amnesty.)
Given the problems in the state-owned sectors of the economy, lay-offs are likely to continue. Graft will also persist because it is essentially the result of a half-reformed economic system and a ruling party that is above the law—causes that the willingness of the authorities to arrest, prosecute and sometimes shoot corrupt officials does nothing to address. Popular discontent is therefore unlikely to disappear soon.
The PLA
The army was reduced in size in the 1980s, but following the bloody crackdown by the military on popular demonstrations in 1989 the armed forces gained a greater political role. In the immediate aftermath of the massacre there were reports that a number of generals had attended meetings of the politburo, albeit in a non-voting capacity. The influence of the People's Liberation Army (PLA, China's military) was still being felt several years later. China's large intimidatory military exercises in the Taiwan Strait in 1995 and 1996 appeared to reflect the need of Mr Jiang and other leaders to pander to the hawkish views of the military. An order issued by Mr Jiang in July 1998 for the military to give up its business empire suggested that the civilian leadership was trying to reduce the direct political power of the PLA. The military is, however, unlikely to be pushed out of politics completely; its profile and clout were raised by heightened tension with Taiwan in 1999-2000. Ultimately the PLA's political power is guaranteed by its role as the protector of party rule in China.
Control over the army is vested in two parallel commissions, the State Central Military Commission (CMC) and the Party Central Military Commission. The bodies usually have identical memberships, and meetings of the State Central Military Commission are rarely reported, leaving no doubt as to where the real power lies. The chairmanships of the two commissions were the last official leadership positions that Deng Xiaoping held until 1989-90, when he handed both jobs to Mr Jiang. Mr Jiang's successor as CCP general secretary, Hu Jintao, is vice-chairman of the CMC.
The ruling party's monopoly on political power
The CCP has tried hard to maintain China's monolithic power structure, leaving various identifiable interest groups in effect underrepresented. Although there are national organisations supposedly looking after the interests of women, farmers and workers, all are tame bodies pliant to the will of the CCP. Even before the CCP mobilised against student protesters in 1989, it had denounced as \"counter-revolutionary\" the independent trade unions that had sprung up during the protests. The CCP remains nervous of any sign of organisation among workers, mindful of the role of Solidarity in the downfall of Communist Party rule in Poland.
The party traditionally enforced social control and political discipline in large measure through the pervasive role of the \"work unit\". State-owned factories provided not just a salary, but housing, education and political indoctrination. The so-called neighbourhood committees, often composed of retired workers, provided another mechanism of control in the cities, in such areas as family planning and crime prevention. These systems of social control are, however, gradually breaking down. This is partly the unintended result of government policy, as the government pursues structural reform of the SOEs. It is also because greater social mobility and the aspirations stimulated by 20 years of strong income growth have made people less susceptible to constant surveillance.
Organised dissent or questioning of the CCP's right to rule is not tolerated. Any form of organisation that can mobilise large numbers of people is regarded as threatening. This remains true even 50 years after the founding of the PRC. For example, after 10,000 of its adherents protested in Beijing in 1999, a spiritual group, Falun Gong, was outlawed as an \"evil cult\", and has since been subjected to a fierce campaign of repression. Political leaders accept that vocal resistance to the process of reform by SOE workers who have lost jobs is inevitable, but any attempt to organise such protests is treated harshly. The globalisation of information through the Internet is also seen as a potential threat, and access to Internet sites is censored, as are the national media. Separatist aspirations in Tibet, or among the Muslim Uighur population centred in Xinjiang in the west, are also suppressed. The rise of radical Islamist movements in central Asia, which might lend support to Uighur separatists, is a serious concern, and this explains China's support for the US-led \"war against terrorism\".
Decentralisation of power
Although the CCP reacts strongly to the growth of regional independence movements, local governments have at times in the last 50 years gained some degree of autonomy. Given China's topography—the PRC is almost as big as the US, and some provinces have populations as large as those of significant countries—this is perhaps not surprising. The attitude of the central authorities in Beijing has also been important. During the 1960s and 1970s attempts by Mao to \"unleash the masses\" led to decentralisation, but the chaos that ensued inevitably meant that these phases were followed by periods of recentralisation.
Since then there has been a more consistent trend of decentralisation, as resource mobilisation powers and spending responsibilities have been devolved to local governments. Local governments have also increasingly become entrepreneurs and major stakeholders in local enterprises, seeking to maximise employment and revenue-raising opportunities in the areas under their jurisdiction, regardless of the policy instructions of the central government. The central government is far from powerless: it can still exercise considerable influence through its ability to appoint and remove leading local officials, and provincial governors are frequently reshuffled to prevent the emergence of a localist challenge. Moreover, the centre can usually win compliance, albeit sometimes reluctant and slow, with its main policies. However, some observers argue that devolution is irreversible and that, given the size and diversity of the country, the government will eventually have to be reorganised along federal lines. |
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