Adapting to survive, dividing to rule; China’s CP – Atrophy and Adaptation - Review - PR 9

 David Shambaugh

David Shambaugh is a leading American academic Sinologist from the George Washington University and the Brookings Institute. China’s Communist Party (CCP), Atrophy and Adaptation, considers the CCP’s prospects for survival by assessing the contradiction at its heart between atrophy and adaptation. The “atrophy” refers to the party’s current politics compared with the idealistic days of its 1940s youth and its risk of following the road to collapse of its Russian and Eastern European counterparts. The “adaptation” refers to the party’s ability to learn and adapt to maintain its rule, to cope with the pressures of globalisation, the creation of a market economy, growing social stratification, inequality, corruption, unemployment, crime and unrest.

It might come as a surprise with a writer at the heart of the American establishment but this is no wild anti-communist rant of the kind penned by Will Hutton last year. Instead Shambaugh gives us is a real critical look at Western intelligence and academic sources (and they’re often very nearly the same thing) and the CCP itself.

Shambaugh draws a distinction between “pessimists”, who believe that China faces imminent collapse and revolutionary change and “optimists”, who believe that China’s CCP will be able to maintain its rule into the foreseeable future. Whether the labels are apt or not, he is firmly in the optimistic camp. Shambaugh recognises the possibility of collapse but notes that “This is not, however, to predict that all such parties will eventually implode and lose power.” (p5)

Shambaugh begins by making an assessment of “Western Discourse on Communist Party-States”, he does so in order to measure the accuracy of Western theorists predictions about the fall of the USSR. They were all very inaccurate. In fact according to Shambaugh only Zbigniew Brzezinski, the notorious cold war warrior and adviser to President Jimmy Carter, did so.

After the event of course, these theorists were able to arrive at an explanation, citing the stagnation of the economy, the decay of civil society, the alienation of the people from the Communist Party, the decline of their coercive power, the over emphasis on military competition, racism and national chauvinism. But in reality the collapse of the Stalinist states took the world, including the US intelligence and academic community, by surprise.

This of course should serve as a warning to us today, abrupt and unexpected events are part of the everyday, as Shambaugh recognises himself, so what about the Chinese?

The Chinese Stalinists were horrified to witness the events of Eastern Europe and Russia between 1989-91. They were disgusted at the flabby, weak and conciliatory attitude of the various Stalinist parties, which with the notable exception of Romania, refused to fight to defend their rule.

They contrasted this response most unfavourably with their crushing response to the Tiananmen Square uprising of 1989. Gao Di speaking on behalf of the Chinese Central Committee, savaged the Generals behind the ill-fated 1991 Russian coup, they, “should simply have arrested Yeltsin and Gorbachev before they did anything else, just as we did the Gang of Four . . . [the coup plotters] could never have achieved their ends by working within the framework of the constitution. You do not ask a tiger politely for his skin – either you kill him or he will kill you! Revolution is merciless – if you do not overthrow him, he will overthrow you!” (p.58)

 The Chinese Stalinist will adapt to survive, but this is no toothless tiger.

But aside from their commitment to the use of the utmost extreme force to maintain their rule, the CCPs analysis of the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc centred around four themes:

*              The deterioration of the economy, high levels of debt and poor standards of living

*              Dictatorships’ ruling parties divorced from the populace and a lack of local level party building

*              Unions that were not a bridge between the party and the working class

*              Peaceful evolution efforts by the Western countries.”

The legitimacy of Stalinist rule in Eastern Europe and the USSR had been fatally undermined by the alienation of the party from the masses. This when combined with the stagnation of the economy, falling living standards and western propaganda for “democracy”, built a fatal social combination, such that by the time Gorbachev (“a traitor like Trotsky” according to the CCP) attempted his reform process it was both too much and too little. It weakened the repressive potential of the state apparatus, but encouraged a restorationist alliance around Yeltsin which eventually overthrew Stalinist rule. It is this combination of circumstances which the Chinese are desperate to avoid.

Shambaugh goes into much more detail around the nuances of the various analyses, which show a sophisticated appreciation of the problems faced by the Stalinists in maintaining their dictatorship. They were summarised by one theorist Li Jingjie, “to concentrate on economic development, undertake political reform, uphold Marxism and strengthen efforts as party building” (p78), which together have clearly provided the inspiration for the policy of the CCP until the present.

This process of adaptation required a remoulding of the CCPs ideology, not least because with the restoration of capitalism in the mid-1990s, much of the media was now increasingly financed and run by business interests. This created tensions between the propaganda authorities and the journalists, publishers and editors who needed to write interesting stuff people wanted to buy.

Shambaugh uses three recent campaigns by CCP authorities to illustrate this process, Jiang Zemin’s, the CCPs general secretary, “Three Represents”, Hu Jintao’s “Scientific Development” and “Socialist Harmonious Society” and a campaign in 2004-5 on the party’s “Governing Capacity.”

The Three Represents, asserted that the party itself should represent the “advanced productive forces in society”, those in “modern culture” and also “the interests of the vast majority of the people.” Leaving aside the mangling of Marxist categories, what’s more important is what they meant for the practice of the CCP, which was the opening of the party to intellectuals from the private sector. In other words the CCP wanted to incorporate the rising private sector bourgeoisie and their representatives into its structures. How successful they were is moot. By 2004 according to the party’s figures, of the 2.41 million new members just 894 were enterprise owners.

After succeeding Jiang, Hu Jintao’s campaign for a “Socialist Harmonious Society”, was an attempt to address the growing social stratification of Chinese society – inside the cities and between the urban and rural sectors, not least because of the growing rural unrest, as farmers were stripped of their land for development. Hu introduced a range of reforms to ameliorate these contradictions.

The “Governing Capability” campaign was an attempt to revive local party bodies and address corruption. (p.125) And this reveals the real social roots of the CCP, in 2007 it had over 73 million members and 3.6 million local level party organisations, (p134). Alongside this went a strictly limited and controlled process of internal democratisation, cadre training and promoting a new generation of leaders. This is an attempt to avoid the alienation of the party from society which sealed the fate of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in the late 1980s.

Shambaugh assesses whether the CCP can survive. Recognising the many similarities between it and its Stalinist counterparts in the former USSR and Central Europe, he thinks political breakdown is improbable, precisely because of the CCP’s ability to adapt, he similarly rules out a return to Maoist central planning or a fascist type dictatorship. His conclusion is then that through an eclectic series of reforms the CCP can survive for the foreseeable future.

Shambaugh’s book is a serious attempt to look at the CCPs rule, the contradictions which underpin it and the CCP’s ability to adapt in order to maintain its rule. However, not surprisingly for a US academic, he downplays the possibilities of a mass working class upsurge against the dictatorship. The workers’ movement in China is now a mighty 300 million strong, a very different situation to the days of Tiananmen Square. A stalling of economic growth and rising prosperity could be the spark that unites the many grievances of town and country. Precisely because the CCP is a mass party, any real crisis and explosion of the masses will find its expression in the party itself. It has yet to be tested in a mass revolt similar to Russia in 1905 or even Indonesia in 1997/98. Speed the day.

Sat 04, October 2008 @ 13:14