Years of Poems and Spirits

Book: Holding China Together

Main arguments: China will not fall apart just because it becomes marketized.
Geneology of arguments:
Regionalism-disintegration: Chen Chu-yuan (Tiananmen Massacre), Maria Hsia Chang (China’s Future), Kenichi Ohmae (Borderless World), David Good man and Gerald Segal (China Deconstructs), Jack Goldstone (The Coming China Collapse), Gordon Chang (The Coming Collapse of China)
Economic Optimism, China Threat—similar presumption: Overholt (The Rise of China), Richard Bernstein and Munro (The Coming Conflict), Michael Brown, Cote (The Rise of China)

Other commentators highlightd the dramatic differences b/w a capitalist South and bureaucratic-authoritarian North … (4)

The potential effectiveness of those national institutions, which have also undergone adaptations and transformations … The volume addresses questions of national unity and diversity … (6)

There is no evidence that this diversity (of policies, implementations) cannot be accommodated within the framework of a growing and developing China.
We seek to provide a more coherent and realistic account of the esilience of the Chinese state … The fragmentation view of China was mistaken … those observers … misunderstood the crucial processes of economic transition re-shaping state and society relations. (7)
—In what way econ reshape state-society? Is the author only thinking along the frag/nonfrag dimension?

Ultimately, China is too vast and complex to be governed effectively by a small group of leaders at the top of all the important national hierarchies… To be successful, system must (becomes) a genuinely open and responsive system of governance.
–No article/essay in the book backs up this assertion at all.

Personnel as key to the unity of China:
This nomenklatura personnel system is the most important institution reinforcing national unity…The personnel function is a monopoly of the Communist Party. It is … perhaps the ultimate foundation … of CCP power. But Party decision making is not exposed to public scrutiny and it is forbidden to publicly discuss personnel decisions or decision making.
–What about violence as the ultimate power base and personnel/investiture power is only an agent of dominance by force?

Charles Lindblom: socialist systems hhaving “strong thumbs, no fingers”: massive mobilization, coercion but no finesse. (22)

Issues:
1. Local influence in party congress; How provincial powers are integrated into national one.
Each province now has two seats on the CP Central Committee, and a large majority of CC members have provincial power bases… (11) integrated into the national political system (12)
2. Party and People’s Congress (party secretary as PC’s head, arms length control but ultimate decision maker) (13-14)

—————
Thoughts:
Mainly a top-down approach, only the state (p7)
Assumption: DXP, like Chen Yun, is more of a bureaucrat than a visionary power grabber.
Conclusion: Cultural revolution destroyed the social and political structure of China so thoroughly that, in its aftermaths, there is no gravitational power center left (either local elites, party faction or political association of any kind). This left a feeble and humbled CCP still in power today.
In Huntington’s terms, the basic pattern (or relationship) of participation and institutionalization has not been changed by the CR. Therefore, there was no revolution followed.
Instead, CR only disrupted the participation/institutionalization function by throwing in disproportional parameters. The result is a strong concensus of re-strengthening institutions and restraining participation, which describes the current leadership perfectly.