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RESEARCH ARTICLE
The Endgame or Resilience of the Chinese Communist
Party’sRuleinChina:AGramscianApproach
Li Xing
1
Published online: 19 April 2017
#Journal of Chinese Political Science/Association of Chinese Political Studies 2017
Abstract This paper intends to provide a framework for conceptualizing and
interpreting the resilient capacity and adaptability of the Chinese Communist Party to
cope with changing political and economic environments and to sustain its hegemony
through periods of crises and transformations. Based on an instrumental reading and
reflective incorporation of some relevant concepts and discourses of Gramsci’s political
theory, the paper aims to facilitate a well-rounded analysis of the CCP’s authoritarian
resilience, which is achieved through a continuous process of Bpassive revolution^.The
party’s new hegemony is realized through a reconstituted historical bloc on the basis of
convergence of interests and through neutralizing the pressures of various contending
forces that might otherwise trigger profound structural transformations. The paper
concludes that Bauthoritarian resilience is one of the strongest enduring features of
the CCP’s political culture, characterized by dynamic adaptive skills and greater
institutional capacity for political survival.
Keywords Hegemony.Passive Revolution .Resilience .Adaptability.Gramsci
Introduction: The CCP’s Resiliency in the Midst of Crises
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was founded on July 1, 1921 in Shanghai with
only 12 founding members. After 28 years of ideological, political and armed struggles,
the CCP finally achieved state power and founded the People’s Republic of China in
1949. Today the party is the largest political organization in the world with more than
80 million members.
J OF CHIN POLIT SCI (2018) 23:83–104
DOI 10.1007/s11366-017-9490-y
*Li Xing
xing@cgs.aau.dk; http://vbn.aau.dk/da/xing@cgs.aau.dk
1
Department of Culture and Global Studies, Aalborg University, Kroghstraede 3, Room 5-241,
9220 Aalborg, Denmark
The CCP started as a Marxist-Leninist party in form, but a nationalist party in
substance. The continuous legacy of Mao Zedong is due to his role as a nationalist
leader in a nation-state building project rather than as a Marxist leader in communist
movements. Nationalism has always been an important element of the CCP’s approach
to maintaining political legitimacy and national unity. The CCP identifies and defines
the national interest, and then safeguards what is possible to defend that national
interest in an endless endeavor to recover China’s historical great power status.
Historically, the CCP survived from numerous crises during the war periods of the
1930s–40s. Even since it became the ruling party in 1949, the CCP had survived from
three major periods of crisis in which the legitimacy of the party faced unprecedented
challenges.
The first major crisis refers to the Bcrisis of socialism^(1950s–1970s), during which
the 10 years of the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) were seen as the period of the most
serious political and economic radicalism and social chaos, which brought the entire
country to the brink of civil turmoil. Even before this crisis of the Cultural Revolution,
the countries had already experienced several political and economic turbulences, such
as the Great Leap Forward and the Anti-Rightist Movement in the 1950s.
The second major crisis refers to the Bcrisis of legitimacy^[12
1
,30]. This crisis was
associated with the market reform since the end of the 1970s. The grave consequences
generated by China’s marketization development in terms of overemphasizing eco-
nomic growth and productivity eroded the CCP’s own adherence to Bpolitical
correctness^based on socialist equality and common prosperity. The willingness of
the CCP to subordinate its core political and cultural values to rapid economic growth
and capital accumulation weakened Chinese traditional social cohesion and created
new contending forces between the CCP’s pro-market and pro-capital policies and the
population’s adherence to many socialist norms. Socialism’s focus on workers’rights,
common prosperity and state ownership clashed with the reform policies that empha-
sized market rationality, the marginalization of labour rights, the dissolution of agri-
cultural collectivism and the dismantlement of state-owned enterprises. Serious in-
equalities, a devastated pollution and environmental degradation, rampant official
corruption, periodic bouts of high inflation and widespread unemployment demonstrat-
ed the disjuncture between socialist ideology and economic reality. The transition to the
market economy has effectively redefined the Chinese traditional cognitive model of
political legitimacy [11]. It was widely predicted that the political and ideological
legitimacy of the CCP would eventually break down because this contradicted the
embedded logic of the economic marketization.
The third crisis was, in one way or another, connected with the second crisis. It
emerged in the aftermath of the tragedy of Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989,
2
during
which the CCP’s political legitimacy reached a dangerous low. Mainstream politicians
and opinion-makers both in the West and inside China predicted an imminent collapse
of the CCP, because they believed that the party would crumble in a manner similar to
1
Jürgen Habermas identifies a crisis as comprising several levels: a crisis of efficiency and rationality on the
level of the system; a crisis of legitimacy on the socio-cultural level; and a crisis of motivation on the
individual level [12].
2
This refers to a series of demonstrations in Beijing in and near Tiananmen Square mainly led by student
activists and intellectuals during the period between April 15 and June 4, 1989. This event caused a short-term
pause in China’s reform program and deteriorated China-West relations.
84 L. Xing
that of its Eastern European counterparts. Such doomsday anticipation was derived
from the perceived incompatibility between the socio-political liberal forces generated
by the market forces and the CCP’s anti-democratic political authoritarianism. Conse-
quently, on the one hand, China’s reform program was temporarily halted, and China’s
relations with the West deteriorated; while, on the other hand, the 1989 tragedy unified
the CCP on an extraordinary consensus that the planned political reform driven by the
economic marketization pressure must slow down within a foreseeable future. The
deepening of the economic reform in the early 1990s pushed by Deng Xiaoping was
seen as the CCP’s endeavor to rebuild its hegemony through developing performance-
based legitimacy, or eudaimonic legitimacy.
Today, in contrast to the early pessimism of BChina collapse^, the country is the
world’s second largest economy. Since the beginning of 2010, China alone has
contributed over one-third of global GDP growth [44]Sept.21,[45] March 21. China’s
economic performance and market indicators have a profound impact on the global
financial and commodity markets. This is even more apparent now than previously: on
the one hand, the economic growth of many countries and regions is becoming more
dependent on their trade with China; on the other hand, China’s strong competitiveness
in international trade has raised concerns for workers and firms in both developed and
developing countries. The newly elected US President Donald Trump openly blamed
the country’s trade with China as one of the major factors causing American economic
decline.
The effects of Chinese overseas investments have begun to be felt across the world.
Beijing’s policies on finance, currency, trade, security, environment, resource manage-
ment, food security, raw materials and product prices are increasingly seen as affecting
the economies of millions of people outside of China’s borders. The Chinese currency
Yuan has been enlarging its regional and global roles, while global financial banks are
becoming sensitive to Beijing’s monetary policies, especially when the Chinese Yuan
was recently accepted by the IMF to become one of world’s major SDR
3
currencies.
By 2015, according to the Fortune Global 500 list by the Fortune Magazine,China
was the second largest country in terms of the number of companies listed in the
ranking with a total of 106 companies on it, only behind the US. According to the
Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report 2015, China accounted for one fifth of the world’s
population and possessed about 10% of global wealth, while China’s middle class also
surpassed the US and is now the biggest in the world. Already in 2014, China was
calculated by the major international economic institutions to be the largest economy in
the world in PPP terms (Purchase Power Parity).
China’s success in transforming itself from a plan-economy owned and controlled
by the state to a market-economy supervised and regulated by the state in combination
with the market mechanism has been coined as the BChinese model^. This concept has
even been paradigmatically raised to the normative level as the BBeijing Consensus^
[35]. The notion of the BChinese model^is embedded with specific historical
dimensions, unique cultural elements and assertive ideational beliefs, and it is
3
SDR refers to the BSpecial Drawing Rights.^SDR currencies are supplementary foreign exchange reserve
assets defined and maintained by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Currently, the existing SDR
currencies are the US Dollar, the Euro, the British Pound and the Japanese Yen. According to the IMF’s
recent decision, the Chinese Yuan was included the SDR currencies as of October 2016.
The Endgame or Resilience of the Chinese Communist Party’s Rule 85
becoming increasingly attractive to developing countries. It is particularly attractive to
many developing countries in terms of how to manage state-market-society relations
and an international political economy. Thomas Friedman, a New York Times foreign
affairs columnist, openly admits the affectivity of the Chinese political system accord-
ing to which Bone party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important
policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century^[8]. Even John
Williamson, one of the main architects of the BWashington Consensus^, acknowledged
in an essay in 2012 that the Beijing Consensus seems to be gaining global recognition
at the expense of the Washington Consensus [22].
Daniel A. Bell [1] argues that the Chinese model can also be identified as a
distinctive Bmodel of governance^, a kind of Bpolitical meritocracy^that is neither
liberal democracy nor authoritarianism when comparing with a western liberal democ-
racy. Although Bell understands the Chinese model to be derived from and well suited
to Chinese history, culture, and political experience, Bell even extends its more general
relevance to the politics of the twenty-first century. Martin Jacques even goes so far as
to argue that the CCP has been constructing an advantageous Bcivilization state^,
rooted firmly in its ancient culture and traditions, and has been projecting its political
and cultural identity ever more widely as opposed to the declining Bnation state^in the
West [ 20].
Despite the above hardcore facts regarding China’s continuous emergence and the
worldwide positive assessment of its development experience, the ghost of the BChina
collapse^and Bthe end of the CCP rule^has still been alive, even since the BThe
Coming Collapse of China^by Gordon Chang [5]. One of the latest echoes of BChina
collapse^was BThe Coming Chinese Crackup^in Wall Street Journal (2015, March 6)
by China scholar David Shambaugh [41], who claimed BThe endgame of communist
rule in China has begun, and Xi Jinping’s ruthless measures are only bringing the
country closer to a breaking point.^Shambaugh’s pessimistic attitude contradicts his
nother writing of some years ago in which he acknowledged the CCP’s resiliency and
adaptability [40]. Worldwide debates about the eventual sustainability or collapse of the
CCP, the Chinese party-state or the burgeoning market are still going on [3,18,33].
Some of Chinese scholars, such as Minxin Pei, also question the sustainability of
China’s prosperity and foresee the Btwilight^of the CCP’srule[34].
In his bestseller Political Order and Political Decay, Francis Fukuyama claimed that
BAll societies, authoritarian and democratic, are subject to decay over time,^and he
correctly pointed out that BThe real issue is their ability to adapt and eventually fix
themselves^[9]. The CCP has certainly been undergoing periods of crisis and policy
decay –just like most Western democracies, but it is still remaining in power and
appearing more confident in its continued rule. Therefore, the central research question
for this paper is how to understand and analyze the CCP’s resilience and durability in
spite of the repeated predictions of its breakdown.
Objective and Methodological/Theoretical Consideration
It is important to point out that the paper does not aim to claim that it has the answers to
the research question; rather, it aims to provide a framework for identifying, concep-
tualizing and interpreting the core characteristics of the resilient capacity and
86 L. Xing
adaptability of the CCP. In other words, it intends to construct a framework for
understanding the CCP’s durability characterized by Bchallenge-response^dynamism,
i.e. how internal and external factors helped to instigate China’s transformations, and
how generations of the CCP leadership have historically been struggling to respond to
the challenges. The paper attempts to analyze how the CCP is able to deal with the
complex relationship between transformations and embeddedness, and to initiate
political, economic and socio-cultural innovations inperiodsofcrisesand
transformations.
The Gramscian Relevance
Ironically, the Gramscian political theory can be applied to explain both the above
mentioned crises experienced by the CCP and the its resilient sustainability. The paper
focuses on the new type of legitimacy and hegemony the CCP has achieved since the
economic reform started. The author maintains that the CCP’s achievements can be
conceptualized and reflected by some important aspects of Gramscian political theory,
which can explain to what extent the CCP has been proactively engaging itself in an
endless process of adaptation and accommodation. The paper analyzes how the
continuously renewed hegemony is realized through a reconstituted union of social
forces on the basis of convergence of interests and through neutralizing the pressures of
various contending forces that might otherwise trigger profound structural
transformations.
AccordingtoLiu[28], and the author’s own knowledge, Gramsci was not
introduced as part of orthodox Marxism in China, and thus, Gramsci’s political
theory remained unknown until the Chinese translation of Perry Anderson’s
Considerations on Western Marxism became available in 1981. It is almost
certain that few CCP members, including the Party’s political theorists, had
access to Gramsci’s writings before the 1980s. Since then, the introduction of
Gramsci’s political thought and theoretical ideas was seen to add a new degree of
flexibility and adaptability to Marxism. Gramsci’s political theory enables the
CCP thinkers and Chinese scholars to read and reflect Marx in the conditions of
modern Western capitalism as well as in the experiences of socialist experiment.
Gramsci’s non-determinist approach offers a way to analyze relation between
crisis and revolution. This approach eschews the attempt to interpret historical
development and social transition from one mode of production to another purely
in terms of the development productive forces. If Marxism and Maoism are
applied along with Gramsic’s theoretical frame, we can perhaps reach a better
understanding of both the historical and theoretical significance of modern
socialism and the limits of that experience, including the social, political and
economic relations displayed in ex-socialist societies.
Gramscian political theory provides a horizon of analysis for ideology and politics
that eschews any simple causal explanation. It teaches us to comprehend a multi-
faceted reality and material conditions which are full of contradictions and possibilities.
Many of Gramsci’s key concepts, such as Bhegemony^,Brule by consent^,Bpassive
revolution^,Bcollective will^,Bwar of position^,Bhistorical bloc^, etc., help us Bto
analyze contemporary society…to ask the right questions about what is new in social,
political, and economic development, about the contradictory effects of the historical
The Endgame or Resilience of the Chinese Communist Party’s Rule 87
process, about the implications and consequences of specific forms of institutional and
social relations in different countries^([37]: xviii).
In applying Gramsci’s theory to explain the Chinese case in general and the CCP’s
development in particular, it is important to keep in mind that many of the background
references, and many socio-political and socio-economic conditions and premises in
Gramsci’s theories and analyses hardly fit into the Chinese history and reality. Aware-
ness of these limitations, however, does not affect the validity of Gramsci’stheoretical
insight and the usefulness of his analyses and arguments in providing a framework for
understanding not only the limits and problems of the contemporary socialist experi-
ments led by the CCP, but also the passive revolution processes in which the CCP
responds to an organic crisis by implementing political reforms, economic restructuring
as well as social reorganization in order to sustain the dominant mode of the CCP-based
power structure and political system and to reduce the potentials for radical revolu-
tionary changes.
Through an instrumental reading and interpretation of the important aspects and
implications of Gramsci’s political theory, the subsequent discussions analyze the
CCP’s uninterrupted passive revolutions in constantly reconstructing hegemony and
in coping with the dislocations between theory and practice, between hegemony and
consent, between ideology and material reality in the aftermath of Mao Zedong and
during the periods of economic reform, including the current era of China’sglobalrise.
Gramsci’s Political Theory and Reflection
Gramsci’s theoretical thought and philosophical insights are concentrated in his Selec-
tions from the Prison Notebooks, in which his conceptual analyses are centered on the
state, on the interaction and relationship between civil society and the state, and on the
relationship between politics, ideology and production. The Gramscian theory of
hegemony, which involves a number of interrelated elements such as power, class
struggle and interest, national-popular, civil society, material base, democracy, etc.,
constructs a profound conceptualization framework of the dialectical relationship
between state and society, politics and ideology. Most of his analyses were based on
his understanding and experiences of bourgeois hegemony in Western advanced
capitalist societies. Nevertheless, Gramsci’s thinking, particularly his concept of hege-
mony together with a set of intertwined relationships, is valuable and helpful in
understanding both the limits and crisis of post-revolutionary societies and their
uninterrupted struggle to maintain a counter-hegemonic project within the existing
capitalist world system.
Hegemony and Passive Revolution
The point of departure of the theoretical framework which Gramsci developed is the
notion of hegemony, i.e. a dominant class exercises power over subordinate classes by
means of a combination of coercion and consent. It aims at finding some answers to the
limitations of classical Marxist economic explanations. Traditional Marxism asserts that
when productive forces have developed to the level that existing production relations
can no longer be compatible with their further growth, social revolution will be
88 L. Xing
irresistible and the old systems will crumble. The theory of hegemony attempts to
explain why Marxist assertion was not realized by looking at other dimensions: Ba
powerful mechanism of consolidation exists within the social and political superstruc-
ture which helps to stabilize the ascendancy of a class at the limiting point of
production compatible with its continuity^([39]: 219). The theory tries to widen the
analytical perspective and stress the necessity and importance of studying social aspects
in addition to the economic sphere. Gramsci converted hegemony from being a
revolutionary strategy into a concept in which he added a new dimension, i.e. including
the practice of a dominant class both in gaining and maintaining state power. A
dominant class, seen by Gramsci as a hegemonic class, is Bone which gains the consent
of other classes and social forces through creating and maintaining a system of alliances
by means of political and ideological struggle^(Simon: 22–23).
Gramsci identifies the hegemony of a state as Bforce plus consent^,orhegemony
armored by coercion, in which the state (political society) organizes force, whereas
society (civil society) provides consent ([10]: 263). The Gramscian concept of hege-
mony implies that in order to maintain its ruling position, the dominant class in
advanced capitalist economies tends to use Brule by consent^rather than Brule by
force.^To rule by consent is to claim to represent the universal interests of the whole
society, not only politically and economically, but also culturally and ideologically.
Hence, the hegemony of the ruling class refers to its intellectual and moral leadership,
according to Gramsci, in creating a Bcollective will^([31]: 184). The social order which
the ruling class has created and recreated in a web of institutions, social relations and
ideas represents a basis of consent ([4]: 201).
The process of realizing and maintaining such an order is termed by Gramsci as
passive revolution. The notion of passive revolution, according to Sassoon ([36]:15), is
derived from the conservative tradition going back to Edmund Burke, who argued that
in order to preserve its most essential features, society had to adjust to changes. In more
modern settings, the concept was further developed by Gramsci, who used it to refer to
a style of state class politics which preserves control by a leading group on the one
hand, while instituting economic, social, political and ideological changes on the other.
In other words, the concept encapsulates the means by which a dominant group
maintains hegemony by neutralizing the pressures of various contending forces that
might otherwise trigger profound structural transformations. Consequently, the
defusing process is achieved without undergoing a revolution that might potentially
threaten the dominance of the leading group and the Bmodus operandi^of the system. It
is in this context that the concept of hegemony should be understood; as an expression
of broadly based consent, manifested in the acceptance of ideas and supported by
material resources and institutions.
Hegemony and Material Base
The notion of hegemony is perceived to be a process that is entered into by both the
dominators and the dominated: both the rulers and those who are ruled use psycholog-
ical and material rewards in an endless exchange of social, political and economic
reproduction. This clearly denotes one of Gramsci’s key theoretical presuppositions that
Bhegemony has a material basis.^It entails that any compromise or change, albeit it
necessary, must not challenge the economic order on which the hegemony of the
The Endgame or Resilience of the Chinese Communist Party’s Rule 89
dominant class is based. To lose the economic order is to lose the reproduction of the
existing mode of production which a dominant class uses to create the material basis so
as to sustain its hegemony and to Bbuy^the consent of the subordinate classes. Under
all circumstances, Ba hegemonic class must be able to create and to maintain an
equilibrium between its own fundamental interests and those of subordinate classes
to the extent that the dominant mode of production cannot be touched and at the same
time the subordinate classes do not withdraw their consent to the rule of the hegemonic
class^([19]: 128–129).
Universal Representation
Gramsci’s theoretical and political contributions provide a comprehensive frame-
work for understanding the more complex and deeper social dimensions of class
culture, which is one of the key political tools of communist parties throughout the
world. It contributes a new perspective on the formation of a universal rather than a
class-based hegemony entailing compromise and democratic solidarity throughout
society in order to reach the goal of revolution or radical social changes. Until the
dominant class is able to transcend its narrow corporative interests, to exert moral
and intellectual leadership, and to establish a broad coalition unified under a social
bloc of forces, which Gramsci called the historical bloc, its hegemony is established
on the basis of the convergence of its interests and those of all subordinate classes.
This kind of broad unification of various socio-political forces and interest groups
under the general consent of the ideology of the dominant class is termed by Gramsci
as conducting war of position [10].
The CCP’sBmass line^
4
and the Bunited front^
5
strategies during the Chinese
Revolution in the 1930s and 1940s were consistent with what Gramsci describes as
Bnational-popular^and a Bwar of position^. During the anti-Japanese War and the Civil
War, the CCP assumed the vanguard role of the proletarian class and was successful in
transforming itself into a hegemonic socio-political force. These strategies aimed to
direct the Bcollective will^shaped by the country’s modern history of humiliation
towards building an alliance with all social forces and combining them into the
framework of Bclass struggle^. The ultimate goal of the struggle was to achieve the
Bcollective goal^: national independence and a prosperous and equal society.
The problem faced by post-revolutionary societies, including China, lies in the
maintenance of hegemony after state power has been gained. As Gramsci stresses,
even after a social class or group has become dominant and achieved power, it must
continue to Blead^as well. Hegemony can never be taken for granted, but must be
4
During the Chinese Revolution, the Communist Party showed a deep understanding of the possible obstacles
to drawing peasants’participation into the revolution. Mao Zedong also made concrete investigations on this
issue. The strategy of the Bmass line^was developed in order to overcome the hindrances.
5
The BUnited Front^strategy/policy is seen as one of the key CCP’s magic weapons that led to its final
victory of state power. The United Front Work Department (中共中央统战部) is also one of the four key CCP’s
agencies under the command of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, with its sub-units
crossing various political levels. Its main task is to maintain relations with and win the support from the non-
Communist parties and elites, including individuals, formal or informal organizations, interest groups both
inside and outside of China, who have certain socio-economic and socio-political, and academic influence.
90 L. Xing
continually maintained. According to this view, politics cannot be simply reduced to
the level of party and state and must encompass all levels and areas of society.
Furthermore, it should be viewed as Ba process which continually meets new chal-
lenges and which cannot be captured within fixed institutional forms^([37]: xv). The
Maoist theory of Buninterrupted revolution^was precisely based the understanding that
once a class or social group has gained state power and achieved hegemony, the spirit
of the Bunited front^policy in the realms of ideology, class struggle, material bases and
social relations on which its hegemony relies must be continually readjusted and
renegotiated. Unfortunately, the Buninterrupted revolution^was turned into a political
weapon for class struggle during the Cultural Revolution.
However, seen from the Gramscian perspectives, it can also be argued that the
setbacks of Chinese socialism (1950s–1970s) were due to the fact that the post-
revolutionary part-state simplified societal complexities by reducing the multiple levels
of social relations into the single dimension of class struggle. Mao Zedong himself had
shown a clear awareness of the different natures of the various social contradictions
[29]
6
. Although the reduction of politics to class relations aimed at enabling a political
practice and raising popular consciousness, and although the Bunited front^strategy of
using compressed political practice to hold social complexity at arm’slengthwas
successful during the armed revolution period, the question remained whether the
post-revolutionary complexities could be encompassed in a simplified and reductive
manner. It has been argued that the setback of Chinese socialism was the CCP’ssetback
in establishing Ba new hegemony around the concept of class at the levels of language,
social relations, political and economic practice, consciousness, and even morality^
([2]: 7).
The centrality of Gramsci’s concept of hegemony intends to reveal the mechanism
whereby the dominant class succeeds in persuading the other classes or groups of
society to accept its moral, political and cultural values ([2]: 11). Through the concept
of hegemony, Gramsci emphasized the difficulties of gaining and maintaining the
leadership position based on the consent of the majority. In criticizing the limits of
the Russian Bolshevik Revolution
7
under the Stalin era, Gramsci argued that politics
and political institutions had been neglected in socialist societies, and socialism could
not be built without democracy, and without popular participation in the political
process ([17]: 20). Gramsci’s concept of hegemony –his views on the problem and
conquest of power, the role of the political party, the relationship between ideology and
class, state and civil society - requires a deep understanding of a whole set of
intertwined relationships within the hegemonic system. In line with this understanding,
politics cannot simply be reduced to the level of party and state and must encompass all
levels and areas of society. Furthermore, it should be viewed as Ba process which
continually meets new challenges and which cannot be captured within fixed institu-
tional forms^([37]: xv).
6
Mao’s awareness can be read from his The Ten Major Relationships, written by him in April 1956. This
writing was an outline for understanding and dealing with ten major relationships in socialist revolution and
construction.
7
Gramsci’s understanding of socialist revolution and socialism came mainly from his knowledge of the
Russian Revolution and Stalinist socialism.
The Endgame or Resilience of the Chinese Communist Party’s Rule 91
The CCP’s Passive Revolutions
Depending on one’s assessment of its successes and failures, the history of the Chinese
CCP can be viewed as an extraordinary socio-political force characterized by a
historically unique attempt to transform Chinese society and by the struggle of its
people in search for a new alternative of development which defied the established
political and ideological norms shaped by capitalist world system. The CCP’slong
history of struggle and revolution can also be understood, in Gramsci’ssense,asan
endeavor to construct a counter-hegemonic project, i.e. Bconstruct a new hegemony
around the concept of class at the levels of language, social relations, political and
practice, consciousness, and even morality^([2]: 7).
Such a project involves not only arenas at political, economic and ideological levels;
it also takes place at the levels of epistemology and ontology which Mao Zedong and
generations of the CCP leadership struggled to transform during his lifetime. For
Gramsci and Mao, the struggle to build such a project represented an extremely difficult
and complex task in which many obstacles were encountered within the realm of
culture and ideology, involving interactions between various relationships such as
politics, state, civil society, class etc. The Gramscian approach to hegemony or
counter-hegemony intends to reveal state-society multifaceted relationships and bring
to light some of the dialectic complexities. In this sense, by careful reviewing Gramsci’s
political thought and theoretical concepts as well as their implications, we can reach a
somewhat better understanding of the factors behind the periodical crises faced by the
CCP as well as its adaptive resiliency in dealing with these crises and reconsolidating
its hegemony.
Seen from the Gramscian perspectives, the CCP understands that crisis implies an
imperative requisite to reorganize society. To establish a new order is not necessarily
the outcome of the final collapse of the old order; rather, it is an outcome of social and
political reorganization initiated or imposed by the political force or a coalition of
forces. Social reorganization can be realized through passive revolution in which the
endurance of an existing order is maintained by absorbing social contradictions which
are not resolvable, but are contained or transformed into new forms of relations.
The post-Mao economic marketization process initiated by the CCP under the Deng
Xiaoping leadership was clearly a response to the social, economic and political
contradictions brought about by the Cultural Revolution and the rigid socialist system.
The Gramsican understanding of hegemony’sBmaterial basis^can be clearly
comprehended in some of Deng Xiaoping’s well-known quotes, such as Bpoverty is
not socialism^,Bto be rich is glorious^,Blet some people get rich first^.Economic
marketization has fundamentally changed the social basis of the CCP, and new bases
and sources for the CCP’s legitimacy must be constantly regenerated and renegotiated
through ideological adjustments and intra-party reforms [38]. Jiang Zemin’sBThree
Represents^can also be seen as reflecting the Gramscian idea of a universal-based
hegemony under a broad coalition represented by a social bloc of forces.
The following subsections of this paper explore the CCP’s subtle and persuasive
maintenance of control and legitimation throughout the above mentioned crises which
can be analyzed from four main perspectives: 1) deliberative mode of governance; 2)
political and cultural embeddedness; 3) framing power; 4) party cooptation and
corporatism.
92 L. Xing
The Deliberative Mode of Governance
Although recognizing that Bauthoritarian systems are inherently fragile because
of weak legitimacy, overreliance on coercion, over-centralization of decision
making, and the predominance of personal power over institutional norms^
([32]: 6), Nathan developed the Bauthoritarian resiliency^concept (2003), which
he used to describe the resilient capacity associated with the particular Chinese
authoritarian system. One of the features of resilient capacity is the Chinese-
style deliberative mode of governance (also termed as Bdeliberative
democracy^).
The core idea of the deliberative mode of governance is the importance of incorpo-
rating people’s voices into concrete decision-making and policy-designing processes,
aiming to make government more responsible and accountable without changing the
power structure and without challenging the CCP’s ruling legitimacy. The CCP’s18th
Party Congress emphasized that deliberative democracy is important for China, because
the deliberative mode of governance involves people in the decision- and policy-
making processes. Some scholars point out the CCP’s unique characteristics of com-
bining deliberation and democracy:
deliberation is usually associated with democracy, they are distinct phenomena.
Democracy involves the inclusion of individuals in matters that affect them
through distributions of empowerments such as votes and rights. Deliberation is
a mode of communication involving persuasion-based influence. Combinations
of non-inclusive power and deliberative influence –authoritarian deliberation –
are readily identifiable in China [16].
Figure 1shows that on the one hand, the power structure of the CCP’s authoritarian
rule in China is quite centralized; on the other hand, it is also permeated by a wide
variety of deliberative practices. The sources of input to forming decisions and policies
Fig. 1 Public deliberation in the CCP’s policy-making and policy-correcting processes
The Endgame or Resilience of the Chinese Communist Party’s Rule 93
are discussed, negotiated and finalized through the formal party-state political structure
at the different levels, while the output of decisions and policies is implemented
through the government at the various levels. Both the input and output processes are
embedded with a Bdeliberative mechanism^, which enables both party-government
officials and the general public to use deliberation rather than power-struggle as the
basis for their consensus. Deliberation also provides the CCP with both an instrument
and an image: an instrument of facilitating the goal of economic reform and policy
efficiency; and an image of implementing political democracy measures that aim to
improve the efficiency of the government while keeping western-style democracy with
institutional checks and balances and popular voting at an arm’slength.Thecollapseof
the Soviet Union was concluded by the CCP to be the result of long-term economic
stagnation and a wrong-headed political reform with an incorrect equence, pursuing the
political reform ahead of the economic reform.
Today, the deliberative mode of governance in China can be found both at micro and
macro levels and is gradually being integrated into decision-making by law stipula-
tions. The Chinese State Council has issued official documents to embrace public
deliberation as a required component in policy-making, in which various arguments in
favor of or against each policy should be presented. Some scholars examine and
document experiments in deliberative governance that are unfolding in contemporary
China, especially at local levels [14,16,23]. These research findings show that in many
ways, deliberative practices with various Chinese characteristics, such as elite-public
deliberation, village committees/assemblies, and deliberative polls, may prove to hold a
greater promise for political reform in an authentically Chinese register than Western-
style democracies.
Applying the Chinese-style deliberative mode of governance characterized by some
of its unique deliberative practices and institutions and by an increasingly democracy-
minded public sphere, the CCP effectively turned attention away from the liberal
representative form of ruling legitimacy (multi-party, check-balance, coalition, etc)
and emphasized the outcome of its leadership driven by Bcommon interest^and
Bpublic-good^of policy. Deliberative practices have fostered rational and democratic
values in the people, not in terms of political representation and power sharing, but in
terms of deliberative governance that makes policies/politics responsive to the common
interest. One empirical research finding shows that delegates of the local people’s
congress have increasingly represented the interests and demands of the geographic
areas from which they are elected, and the local people’s congress has become a place
of intersection between contending interests, i.e. between the Bcentral^interests repre-
sented by the local Party committee and the Blocal^interests represented by the local
people’s congress delegates [21]. This type of competitive and institutionalized local
politics can be argued to be a Bgrassroots democracy with Chinese Characteristics^
[43].
In line with Gramsci’s understanding, the post-Mao CCP learned a lesson from its
previous mistakes during the period of the Cultural Revolution and developed unique
awareness of and sensitivity to societal complexity without falling into any single
dimension of rationality and consciousness. Other rationalities, such as culture, religion
and historical tradition can be as important as class consciousness. Obviously, there is
an analogy between the theoretical reconstruction of the CCP’s deliberative practices
and the Chinese political culture, in which the Confucian moral code of deliberation
94 L. Xing
and the institutionalization of deliberation are traceable throughout the history of the
Chinese imperial states [15].
The CCP’s deliberative mode of governance reflects Gramsci’s political teaching on
the significant role of Bcivil society^in shaping public opinion regarding ideas, values,
norms and practices and in strengthening the development policy. Like Gramsci, who
sees civil society as a source of manufacturing and contributing to political hegemony,
but unlike Habermas, who regards civil society as a civil alliance of deliberation and the
source for criticism against the state power, the post-Mao CCP sees civil society as an
indispensable part of the state and an instrument to continue its hegemony. The CCP
realized the importance of going beyond its narrow corporative interests to exert a
leadership role under a broad coalition of historical blocs. The goal of deliberative
practices is to find the convergence of its interests and those of all subordinate classes/
groups. Deliberation implies the broad unification of various socio-political forces
under the general consent of decision- and policy-making processes, and it aims to
consolidate what Gramsci terms a universal rather than a class-based hegemony.
Political-Cultural Embeddedness
The concept of Bpolitical-cultural embeddedness^denotes the perceived importance of
the CCP’s vital role in shaping China’s development in line with principal ideologies
within the political and cultural contexts. As Zheng argues (2010), while the concept of
the political party in China was imported, the CCP is nevertheless a Chinese cultural
product. Political-cultural embeddedness is believed by the CCP to be an indispensable
instrument for securing national stability and economic development and the decisive-
ness of politics, especially in a period of liberation, marketization and transformation. It
enables the CCP to foster policy consistency and predictability and to promote national
discipline and unity.
One of the unique characteristics of the CCP’s political-cultural embeddedness is the
historically continuous Bsinicization^process. Historically, China has been able to
display a capacity for absorbing foreign ideas and influences and sinicizing and
transforming them into parts of native value systems. Examples of this are the
sinicization of Buddhism and Marxism-Leninism. Currently, the CCP is attempting
to sinicize market capitalism and create a Bmarket economy with Chinese
characteristics^.
The notion of sinicization entails a spontaneous process of absorbing new or foreign
ideas while forcing them to be mixed with and embedded into Chinese native practices
[24,27]. Sinicizaton and re-Sinicization on the basis of historical and cultural tradition
(Confucianism) have been applied as innovative approaches to re-establishing the
CCP’s legitimacy.Political ideas and cultural theories that are embedded in
BChineseness^are especially promoted as a way to entice ordinary Chinese people to
rally around the CCP’s leadership. Sinicization and Chineseness are expressed in two
important ways in today’s China: in policy consistency and ideological/theoretical
adaptation.
Figure 2explains that the power transition process of the CCP leadership
has been characterized by the emphasis on continuity in fundamental political and
ideological tenets, policy coherence and elite politics. This also entails that certain
Bamendments^(CCP’s internal struggles) are necessary in order to resolve the
The Endgame or Resilience of the Chinese Communist Party’s Rule 95
problems inherited from the previous leadership as well as to respond to the emerging
challenges faced by the current leadership. The figure also shows that the CCP has been
constantly attempting to produce and reproduce the Gramscian notion of ideology as a
Bterrain^in which to combine practices, principles, and dogmas of a material and
institutional nature. The goal is to shape a Gramscian Borganic ideology^through an
Barticulating^strategy and to try to incorporate the various ideological elements from
the subordinate groups and individuals and form them into a unified ideological system
–aBhegemonic principle.^
Mao Zedong Thought is regarded by the CCP as one of its core political guidelines.
The influence of Mao’s thought and leadership was so deep and all-embracing in
modern China that the characterization of the People’s Republic of China is often
justified as Bthe China of Mao Zedong.^The reason that Mao was able to lead the CCP
to victory and to dominate China’s political scene for decades was that, in so many
ways, he represented and understood the China of his day. He was an ideal represen-
tation of sinicization and Chinesenesss, both politically and culturally. The CCP’s
legacy and legitimacy will inevitably link closely to some of the historical bases
originated from Mao.
The BDeng Xiaoping theory^in the aftermath of the death of Mao Zedong and the
demise of the Gang of Four can be understood as attempts to amend the rigid period of
dogmatic socialism and socialist planned economy. The key logic behind the theory is
Deng’s cat-mouse pragmatism (Bit doesn’t matter whether the cat is white or black as
long as it can catch the mouse^), implying that if capitalism can produce positive
Fig. 2 Political embeddedness and ideological framing under the CCP’s generations of leadership
96 L. Xing
results, it is good for socialism too. It is an expression of metaphysical and mechanical
materialism that is based on highly pragmatic and practical rationality. It intends to
reinterpret the relationship between productive forces and production relations so as to
establish such a proposition that the basic determinant of human history is not politics,
nor class struggle, but economics, especially the development of the productive forces.
Nevertheless, it does not contradict the basic tenets of Marxist economic materialism,
but instead seeks to adapt them to the existing socio-economic conditions of China.
Deng Xiaoping’sBFour Modernizations^are politically embedded in the the CCP’s
uncompromisable BFour Cardinal Principles^.
8
The CCP’s foreign policy motto under
Deng –Btao guang yang hui^(literally, Bhiding one’s capacity while biding one’s
time^)–used the wisdom of Chinese traditional philosophy and culture to lay the
foundation for China’s peaceful environment for economic development.
The BThree Represents^under Jiang Zemin’s leadership were part of the ideological
re-adaptation and reconstruction of the CCP in the critical period of dramatic socio-
economic and socio-political transformations. They were part of the CCP’scontinuous
attempt to legitimize Deng Xiaoping’sBmarket socialism^through injecting political
embeddedness [24]. The notion of the BThree Represents^refers to the three areas
which the CCP represents 1) the advanced productive forces, 2) the advanced culture,
and 3) the fundamental interests of the majority of the people. It reflected the CCP’s
awareness of the need for theoretical and ideological justifications to acknowledge the
political, economic and social transformations brought about by the rapid four mod-
ernization processes. BAdvanced productive forces^(the new business elite),
Badvanced culture^(Confucian culture of social harmony and respect of authority
and social order) and Bfundamental interests^(the new social constituencies) are strong
discourses (logos) aiming to legitimize the consequences generated by the econo-
centric reform policies and to reinterpret a number of transformed relations, such as
party, state, private economy, class, civil society and cultural changes. It also aimed to
politically embed the rise of various types of capitalist class and to physically incor-
porate them as part the CCP’s new constituent [6,13].
The ideas of BHarmonious Society^and BScientific Development^were introduced
by the CCP under Hu Jintao’s leadership against the backdrop of deepening social
disparities and deteriorating political conflicts resulting from the rapid economic
development and the pro-capital policy advocated by the previous CCP leaderships.
The overemphasis on economic growth and wealth accumulation led to serious conse-
quences: rampant inequality, corruption, social security decay, environmental degrada-
tion that threatened the party’s stability and legitimacy as well as the hard-won peace
and stability that underpin China’s success. These new ideas called for a shift toward
coordinated and sustainable development together with rule of law and cultural and
moral developments. The application of the concept Bharmony^, which is a central
concept in traditional Chinese philosophy, and the rediscovery of Confucian values
(harmony, family ethics, meritocracy, benevolence, righteousness, courtesy, wisdom,
honesty, loyalty, etc.) were embodied in China’s diplomacy during Hu Jintao’sruling
period. The idealization of Chinese culture in general and Confucianism in particular
8
The CCP’sBFour Cardinal Principles^are 1) Upholding the basic spirit of Communism; 2) Upholding the
People’s democratic dictatorship political system; 3) Upholding the leadership of the Communist Party; 4)
Upholding Marxism–Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought.
The Endgame or Resilience of the Chinese Communist Party’s Rule 97
aimed to shape China’s development trajectory in line with the defined political and
cultural frameworks.
The current BChinese Dream^politics are attempting to address the questions
concerning the direction in which China is moving, and to reconstruct a new hegemony
in a new era in which the interdependence between the Chinese economy and the rest
of world is much deepened. This can be seen as an economic and political hegemonic
project that attempts to go beyond the historical and political nostalgia and construct a
new hegemony around the concept of Bpeaceful rise^for Bpeaceful development^at
the levels of language, social relations, economic development, political practice and
people’s consciousness. To identify the BChinese Dream^as a Bhegemonic project^is
to imply that the new Chinese government under the leadership of Xi Jinping has
started to explore to what extent China can encompass its current internal and external
achievements and convert its growing economic power into enduring and resilient
political and cultural influence both domestically and internationally [25].
Framing Power
One of the unique features of the CCP’s sinicizing capacity is its framing power.
BFraming^refers to a set of ideas, concepts, discourses and perspectives on how
individuals, groups, and societies perceive and process information on Btruth^and
Breality^. It is an important tool used by the ruling class to perpetuate its power.
BFraming power^refers to the capacity of defining and redefining ideas, concepts,
discourses and rhetorics which have policy implications in line with ideological and
political values and norms. Since the essence of social change lies in changing
perceptions, and changing perceptions itself falls into the territory of framing, the
power of framing reflects ideological and institutional continuity through adaptation
and modification. The CCP’s framing power undoubtedly reflects its ideological and
institutional adaptation, because political discourses are not only ways of expressing
viewpoints but also a weapon to legitimize changes as the way they are meant to be.
The CCP believes that certain ways of framing an understanding can lead to changes in
the practices of an institution or a society as a whole.
The CCP is perfectly aware of the power of political discourse in connection with
social changes, because political discourse played an indispensable role in its victory
during the revolution. In the past three decades of economic reforms, the CCP’s
sinicizing capacity and framing power have once again played their due roles. Under-
standing the fact that the linkage between cognition/consciousness (language, concept
and notion) and social change (politics, economics and policies) is established through
the construction of language (argument, expression and explanation) which is embed-
ded with powerful meanings and implications in social-political contexts, the CCP
purposefully designed and formulated a particular set of explanations which aimed to
legitimize political and ideological revisionism and to defend the justification of
reformist social-economic policies.
Recognizing he great importance of promoting market capitalism without cognitive
disconnection with the heritage of its political legitimacy of socialism, the CCP has
been struggling to construct an awkward but pragmatic mixture combining a socialist
logo (socialist identity) with the market forces. Such a mixture is clearly reflected in
many language terms invented for theoretical finesse and ideological justification, such
98 L. Xing
as Bsocialist market economy^or Bmarket economy with Chinese characteristics^,and
BConfucian businessman^, which are politically and economically contradictory but
ideologically and theoretically useful for the new reality. The latter is often coined with
a number of sinicized benchmarks, such as Badherence to the primacy of socialism^,
Bsupremacy of the leadership of the Communist Party^,Badaptation of Marxist princi-
ples to the conditions of China^. These logocentric tenets are not just slogans; they are
imperative to the continuous legitimation of the CCP in face of the fundamental
changes brought about by market capitalism.
One concrete example is that in order to ideologically justify the economic reform in
which the rule by capital and the exploitation of the working classes were accepted, the
CCP invented a theoretical justification which framed China’s post-Mao development
stage as Bthe primary stage of socialism^(rather than what Marx termed the Bprimitive
accumulation stage of capitalism^). This indicates the CCP’s continuous resiliency in
striking a compromise between its political ideology and the Chinese reality. If the
Maoist BChinese Marxism^aimed to sinicize the classical Marxist version of class
struggle and revolution and to redefine the Chinese Revolution as a peasant revolution,
the Dengist Bmarket socialism^attempted to return to the classical Marxist Bstage^
theory, i.e. market socialism intending to build the preconditions for reaching authentic
socialism.
In the current era of globalization and China’s deep integration into the capitalist
world order, the CCP is learning how to sinicize those familiar western theoretical
discourses related to Bsoft power^and Bpublic diplomacy^, in order to replace its own
political language of Bpeople’s diplomacy^, a de facto Maoist Bmass line^strategy
applied to boost China’s rightful legitimacy and image [46]. In recent years, under Xi
Jinping’s leadership, the CCP has started to explore to what extent China can encom-
pass its current internal and external achievements and convert its growing economic
power into enduring and resilient political and cultural influence [25]. Such a
Bhegemonic project^is framed by Xi as the BChinese Dream^, which is described
as, on the one hand, the great historical Brejuvenation^of the Chinese nation, and on
the other, a dream of peace, development, cooperation and mutual benefit for all. As
opposed to the Bwin-or-lose^,Bwinner-takes-all^and Bzero-sum^mentalities, the rise
of China is projected to create Bwin-win^cooperation, to build a Bcommunity of
common destiny^, and to establish a Bnew type of major power relations^with the
established world powers. The projection is to be materialized through China’sBOne
Belt and One Road^initiative, with the outward expansion of its productive and
financial capacity. These foreign policy discourses are framed with catchy phrases in
order to make them more memorable and relatable.
It seems that somehow the CCP understands that the interest of a certain class is not
objective and pre-determined, but rather, is constructed ([31]: 182). Along the lines of
the Gramscian political thinking, hegemony is Bthe ability of one class to articulate the
interest of other social groups to its own^(Mouffe, ibid.). The above ideational
discourses of the CCP’s foreign policy show a great transformation in the CCP’s
discourse politics from a Bpolitics-in-command^approach, i.e. politicization and
ideologization in line with Bpolitical correctness^, to a Gramscian approach in which
the CCP emphasizes the Bactive consent or consensus^and the Bmaterial base^of
ideological hegemony. To Gramsci, ideology is not Bsomething which, as it were, floats
in the air high above the political and other practical activities of men and women^
The Endgame or Resilience of the Chinese Communist Party’s Rule 99
([42]: 58); rather, it has a material existence in these activities. Stoddart also points to
the explicit difference between ideology, which assumes a Bunidirectional flow of
power^, and hegemony, which involves Bconstructing networks of power through
discourses^(2007: 193). Nowadays, the CCP’s foreign policy discourses are unam-
biguously framed in such a way that they reflect a strong awareness of material
existence, such as living-standard and welfare, as an embedded part of its policy
hegemony, both domestic and international.
Corporatism and Cooptation
Since the end of the Cold War, the CCP has been endeavoring to find strategies to cope
with a number of challenges faced by the party organization itself: how to liberalize the
national economy without destabilizing the CCP-led political system? How to trans-
form the party’s organization and absorb new members in order to accommodate the
new socio-political and socio-economic forces? And how to balance the need to adapt
to the new social, political and economic environment and the need to uphold the
party’s basic norms and traditions? Some of the CCP’s key strategies are corporatism
and cooptation, which are designed to help the party and the society to mutually adapt
to each other.
Corporatism in the Chinese context refers to the central characteristics behind
China’s so-called Bsocialist market economy^, in which China has moved from a
socialist planned economy with public ownership towards state regulation of a hybrid
market economy including a large proportion of private economy that still remains
deeply embedded in the party-state system that spawned it [26]. Chinese Bstate
corporatism^best explains the embedded features in the processes of China’ssocio-
economic and socio-political transformations through marketizing decision-making
powers and commodifying public institutions [47]. Corporatism has been playing a
positive role in encouraging marketization and decentralization of state capacities and
public resources, without falling into economic and social disembeddedment and by
maintaining the key ingredients of the Bcorporative relations^between the state and
market that have led to sustained economic growth. However, the political conse-
quences of the CCP’s economic corporatism threatened the party’sBpolitical and
ideological correctness^, and further adaptive measures were needed in order to
facilitate the reform in the CCP’s organizational structure through which corporatism
is represented and realized. Cooptation represents the CCP’s resilient capacity to adapt
itself to the new economic and social environment [7].
Cooptation implies the active recruitment of new party members and the creation of
new links with other emerging organizations. It is aiming to bring in new elites in the
policy-making process, such as entrepreneurs and skilled experts who may invigorate
the party with new ideas and new goals. The CCP realized that the only way to
maintain its political power and economic interests was to quickly transform the party
into a new dominant productive force that is able to continue to rule through new class
relations under the market economy. Breaking down the socialist economic system and
replacing it with the market mechanism may also, even if this is politically risky, enable
the CCP to become not only de-facto owners of the means of production but also
managers of the new economy. In this way the party could capitalize on its official
power while turning its bureaucratic privileges into economic advantages.
100 L. Xing
One of the core aspects of the CCP’s cooptation is the adaptive application of class
politics. BClass^has been a politically coined concept ever since it became a socio-
economic category when Marxism was introduced into China’s modern revolutionary
history. It played a central role in the series of political struggles within the CCP during
the post-revolutionary period. Before the economic reform, the concept of class was
defined not in the terms of classical Marxism (economic ownership) but in terms of
political criteria that were used to mobilize mass participation in both politics and
economic development.
The CCP realized that during the period of socialism and the Cultural Revolution, it
had oversimplified societal complexities in many respects by reducing the multiple
levels of social relations to the single dimension of class struggle. Although the
reduction of politics to class relations was an effective political weapon during the
armed revolution period by which to suppress political struggles and hold social
complexities at an arm’s length, the question was whether such complexities could
be encompassed in a simplified manner in post-revolutionary China.
Today, the new rich classes consist of the same people who were the Bred
bourgeoisie^,Bclass enemies^,Bcapitalist roaders^and Bcounter-revolutionaries^dur-
ing the Cultural Revolution. They are now becoming a real bourgeoisie as a result of
the new production relations that make privatization possible. They are committed to
economic development and a market economy, but their loyalty to the party hegemony
is questionable. They have the skills which are desired by the CCP leaders to accom-
plish their new policy agenda. Their membership may lead to the rejuvenation of the
party, but it may also lead to destabilizing tendencies, such as an increase in corruption
and misconduct among party members. Paradoxically, the China’s socialist period was
full of class politics but had no real class material basis, whereas China’sreformperiod
saw numerous serious class struggles but witnessed class politics becoming a taboo.
The main objective of cooptation and corporatism is to ensure that the CCP
organization becomes inclusionary rather than exclusionary and to reinterpret a number
of transformed social relations so that the CCP’s new cooptation policy is politically
and ideologically justified. The central point is to indicate that the CCP also represents
the interests of the newly emerged social groups of various types, especially the new
rich classes. Nowadays the CCP does not need to use coercive means to control society.
Newly recruited party members are connecting the party with other organizations in
which they are also the key actors. These newly emerged interest groups embedded
with the CCP members allow the party to become the arbiter of competing interests in
regulating conflicts of interests, channeling interest articulation and resolving problems.
Therefore, linking with and accommodating emerging organizations provide the CCP
with a number of benefits in terms of information-receiving, de-politicizing and
diversifying social conflicts, and strengthening Bstate-market clientelism^[47,26].
Combing corporatism with cooptation is the CCP’s political approach toward the
new social stratum, and it reflects the Gramscian style of class politics in which the
interest of a certain class should not be perceived to be objective and pre-determined,
but rather, is constructed ([31]: 182). The CCP’s shift from viewing Bsociety^as being
full of class enemies and contending forces to perceiving it as being the source of a
Bcollective will^and a Bhistorical bloc^for its hegemonic project is paving the way for
its new policies of inclusion. Corporatism is based on sharing common economic goals,
while cooptation is to institutionalize the relationship between the new economic
The Endgame or Resilience of the Chinese Communist Party’sRule 101
classes and the CCP. Although these new capitalist classes and interest groups are
granted a monopoly on the interest they represent, cooptation is aiming to shape them
within the CCP defined frameworks so as to make sure that the CCP’sfundamental
power structure is maintained.
Conclusion
The paper analyzes the CCP’s resilient capacity in maintaining socio-economic and
socio-political hegemony through the instrumental reading of and reflection on
Gramsci’s political theory. Many of Gramsci’s core concepts and discourses can
transcend space and time and continue to yield themselves to our reading in the new
light. They are of immense importance with their enduring conceptual and analytical
insights into the evolution and transformation of the CCP’s hegemony and the party’s
adaptive skills and greater institutional capacity for political survival.
Throughout the past four decades of economic reform, the CCP has proved to
possess adaptability while struggling to maintain its ruling hegemony. Rather than
being a passive actor, the CCP has been able to manage the recurrent crises as a
proactive player –an initiator, a planner, an organizer, an implementer. The resilient
nature of the CCP shows that as long as the party is transforming and adapting itself in
accordance with China’s socio-economic changes, the basic structure of its dominion
over the state and society will not be fundamentally altered [48].
This chapter concludes that it is extremely important to analyze and understand the
systemic adaptive behavior of the CCP as one of the key factors behind the global rise
of China. Today the socio-political basis of the CCP has changed, and so has the pattern
of socio-political interests. Economic growth and social stability are intimately con-
nected with the changing pattern of power relations in society, which is also reflected in
he pattern of relations of interests articulated and promoted in the actual behavior of the
CCP. An analysis of China’s successes, challenges, contradictions or crises must
therefore be complemented by the systemic analysis of the CCP as an institution.
Today, a general consensus on the role of the CCP as the key stabilizer is shared not
only by the Chinese population as a whole but also by the international society at large.
To what extent is the CCP willing to further modify its political establishment in
order to keep its economic system viable? To find the right answer is very difficult. But
an open-ended answer is that if the CCP is able to create a market economy with
BChinese characteristics^, it will be able to establish a political economy with very
evident Chinese characteristics as well.
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Li Xing is a Professor and Director of the Research Center on Development and International Relations,
Department of Culture and Global Studies, Aalborg University, Denmark. Email: xing@cgs.aau.dk.
104 L. Xing
