Years of Poems and Spirits

Cheng Li: Political Localism Versus Institutional Restraints: Elite Recruitment …

How local power is integrated into national system: local representation in party committee (31)
Number of provincial heads in central leadership (32-33) quick promotion too
Elite have to have local portfolio in order to advance (34)

Interesting conflicts/factoids about localities:
Inland deputies blocked Shanghai nominees (35)
High concentration of Shang Dong people in military officier ranks (38)
Shanghai Gang only in the central leadership, not able to penetrate other local leaderships. (46)

Law of Avoidance:
Coded in laws/regulations/personnel systems (49, 62)
Exception: At lower level, deputy leaders are more likely natives (50)

Term Limits:
Even apply to military officiers (54)

Checks and Balances Chinese Style:
中纪委: has local and military representatives (59)
Party school: county level party secretaries have to go through training (66)

Incidents of power struggle during Jiang and the author’s interpretation:
Princelings must be explicitly approved by 中央组织部。(66)
Some princelings were humiliated during party congress (including current Commerce Minister, 薄熙来，Jiang’s former bodyguard and Deng’s son)

Zhiyue Bo: The Institutionalization of Elite Management in China
… Chinese politics has long been regarded as essentially informal (70) See notes on a UC Berkeley’s project on informal politics in East Asia in the 1990s. The March 1996 issue of Asian Survey has a special issue.

These formal powers notwithstanding, the reality is that the CCP continues to dominate the government and the People’s Congress … thorugh its control of the personnel process. (73)

Government and PC candidate nomination process (75)
The Nomination Process (section) 78
… detailed guidelines on how party leaders could strictly follow legal procedures while retaining their influence in elite management ….
Pre-screening candidates (agreed to nominate some comrade for some post …)
The party committee should not make the appointment in its own name, … Instead, the party should operate behind the scens through its various organizations (75-76)

Party head as People’s Congress head since 1990s. (The trend reversed in the 1990s, however, and … party secretaries … taken on the chairmanship of their respective provincial PC) (76)

The Rule of Avoidance and Conflict of Interest (84)
Avoidance rule codified in 1995.
Transfers (90)

Susan Whiting: The Cadre Evaluation System at the Grass Roots: The Paradox of Party Rule
The Principal-Agent model by Terry Moe (The New Economics of Oranization)

Some sample cadre evaluation criteria (105, 107)

Incentive disparity (111) … the bonus for industrial output and profits … The income of the village party secretary, who failed to meet his industrial targets …

The downside: moral hazard problem and gaming the system (112), e.g. overcapacity, selective tax collection …

The problem of multitasking: Sheer number and variety of tasks … multiple indicators were not necessarily mutually compatible (116)

—Thoughts:
Cadre evaluation is an alternative/substitute of civil service exam?
Does Prof. Whiting see a short-termed nature in cadre evaluation system? If so, could this topic be explored further to argue that the CCP is using means to strengthen the party at the expense of the nation.
The closest Whiting got to: 116-117
… organizations in general “avoid pay-for-performance systems based on objective performance evaluation. Paradoxically, however, continued reliance on the cadre … system may have contributed to the durability of CPP rule. Indeed, recent documents … explicitly identify it as an important means for ensuring competence and checking corruption.”

Read WP article: Science Panel Says Proposed Cap-and-Trade System Will Help Clean Air

“The Bush administration’s new program to cut harmful pollutants from utilities through a cap-and-trade system will do nearly as much to clean the nation’s air as the Clinton administration’s effort to make aging power plants install pollution controls when they modernize or expand, a report by an independent scientific panel has concluded.”

–Of course, this does not contradict with the notion that market activities produce externality. Government is still needed to safeguard environment. However, the article seems to indicate that using market machanism is just as effective (if not more efficient) as administrative enforcement.

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.