With his book The Chinese Communist Party's Capacity to Rule, Jinghan Zeng joins the authoritarian resilience debate on how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ensures its internal cohesion and maintains popular support. These two phenomena are, according to the author, the pillars of the Chinese party-state's survival.
This book proposes a comprehensive model to help understand regime survival in China and is therefore a useful addition to the political science literature on the topic. It is structured around two keys facets of Chinese politics – organization and ideology – and brings together the literature on elite politics and that on the CCP's legitimacy. Ideology and legitimacy are the main foci of the book: Zeng reminds us that ideology should still be taken seriously in contemporary China, because an approach solely based on performance legitimacy is of limited use when it comes to explaining the resilience of the Chinese Party-state. Indeed, economic growth does not always guarantee popular support; it also introduces a range of new issues, from rising inequalities to environmental deterioration. More importantly, the state's ideological discourse frames the way its actions are to be understood by the people.
The core of the book is largely dedicated to the study of what Zeng calls “formal” and “informal” ideology, and how they influence the Party-state's legitimacy. “Formal ideology” is made up of the ideological propositions of the various party-state leaders. For Zeng, it is mostly a discourse aimed at the Party itself in order to ensure cohesion. It is not a matter of belief, but can be used to signal one's loyalty to a leader and to the organization, especially in times of power struggle. “Informal ideology” is a mushier concept, which includes the various narratives which legitimize the political system as a whole. While formal ideology has to do with Party cohesion, informal ideology promotes popular support: they therefore complement one another.
The book offers an overview of the evolution of the formal ideological debates, and the inflections of ideological discourse within the CCP in post-Mao China. The author describes three phases: first, a struggle over Mao Zedong's heritage; second, a debate over the introduction of capitalist elements in the Chinese system; and third, the current discussions on how far the marketization of the economy should go and how to deal with the negative consequences of reforms. While this constitutes a useful summary, the actors themselves and their strategies are rather absent from this overview. It therefore remains unclear whether the book's argument is that ideological debates drive the political struggles or whether it is the other way around. Zeng also delves into the evolution of informal legitimacy in post-Mao China. He shows that this discourse is largely negative, highlighting the risks of instability and chaos tied to political change and the risks of democratization in terms of stability or economic performance. He also points to the nationalist elements of this discourse and how they supplement the Party-state ideology rather than replace it, as is sometimes argued.
To further underline the importance of ideology in legitimacy building, he turns to the debates within Western and Chinese social science literatures on the nature of the CCP's legitimacy. This synthesis puts forward the many aspects which constitute the Party-state's legitimacy: economic performance, social stability, public goods provision, crisis management and institutional reforms, but also moral, symbolic and nationalist discourses. Drawing on a sample of 125 Chinese articles on the topic and on previous works by Bruce Gilley and Heike Holbig, Zeng highlights evolutions of the discourse within China regarding the evolution of the CCP's sources of legitimacy: in the 2008–2012 period, economic growth was less emphasized than in the early 2000s, while the improvement of the bureaucracy was increasingly foregrounded.
Overall, Zeng tends to contrast a Western literature which focuses largely on performance legitimacy and is rather confident in the sustainability of the CCP's legitimacy, and a more pessimistic Chinese literature on the topic. One may argue that this is an overstatement. The author's own detailed review paints a much more varied picture, as he often relies on Western authors, such as Heike Holbig or Vivienne Shue, to point out the limitations in their colleagues’ work. Beyond this cultural categorization, a more operational categorization of the contrasting views on the concept of legitimacy itself, in a similar vein to what is proposed for ideology, might have clarified how it has evolved over time and how it interacts with ideology.
Zeng finally explores the organizational evolution of the Party-state and argues that the institutionalization of succession mechanisms, as well as the increasingly meritocratic cadre management system, are key to maintaining Party cohesion. He provides a clear overview of the institutional reforms set up since the 1980s, including the development of term limits, age limits, step-by-step promotion and provincial representation. As the analysis stops in 2012, the author could not include the backpedalling that has taken place under Xi Jinping, which calls into question the CCP's degree of institutionalization.
Zeng's book reads like an ambitious synthesis of works and debates on the evolution of the CCP, which make it suitable for teaching purposes. It has the merit of taking the CCP's official discourse seriously and it raises key questions regarding its ideological evolution. Further work could investigate the future evolution of “formal” and “informal” ideology: is the former to be progressively marginalized by the latter or will the two progressively merge?
