The Volume In Perspective

The chapters in this volume are far richer than the above comments can convey. Each provides analytical insights, a "feel" for the bureaucratic arena being addressed, and, typically, illustrative material that conveys a nuanced appreciation of the forces that shape political and bureaucratic outcomes in China. Overall, however, they do not provide substantial comment on the extent to which the system has changed over time, on the role of the Chinese Communist Party in the polity, on the impact of culture on policy process, and on relations between state and society. These are all important issues for putting into perspective the content and coverage of chapters that follow, and this "Introduction" thus concludes with a few comments on each of these matters.

How Constant Has China's Bureaucratic Practice Remained?

The 1980s reform era created the impression of major change in the way China was governed. In part, those perceived changes were substantive and important. As was noted above, for example, the reforms significantly redistributed flows of information in the system and greatly reduced the role of ideology as a factor in structuring policy formation and implementation. But there is a danger of exaggerating the changes that the reforms produced in China's bureaucratic practice. As figures 1.1 and 1.2 highlight, the system has moved only very partially in the directions sought by the reformers.

Clearly, there have been important continuities as well as changes. The fundamental structure of the Chinese bureaucratic system that was established in the 1950s, for example, remains in place to the present and continues to exert tremendous influence on policy process. Mao Zedong himself altered the scope of authority of the various bureaucratic clusters over time in his quest to keep the political system responsive to his desires. Deng Xiaoping and his reform-minded colleagues continued this practice by considerably enhancing the resources and authority of the economic cluster at considerable cost to the organization/personnel, propaganda/education, coercive, and Party territorial clusters. At the beginning of the

1990s it appears that hard-liners may attempt to increase the resources of the five "losing" clusters of the reform era as part of their strategy for building support for turning back some reform initiatives. While all of these efforts have redistributed authority and resources, none has fundamentally changed the nature of the system. The "losing" clusters during each period remain in the wings as potential resources for political contenders who seek a change of course.

A number of additional factors make it difficult to judge the extent to which bureaucratic practice under Mao differed from the findings presented in this volume. For the Maoist era, we obviously lack the kind of detailed studies based on direct access that are contained here. In addition, the Chinese media were far less informative about this earlier period than they became during the 1980s. And many Chinese interviewees, acting in the best of faith, nevertheless tend to recall past situations in conformity with the current official views concerning those previous periods. Thus, the 1980s demonology concerning the Maoist era has affected recapitulations of decision making during that era.

Even the extent of pressures for change effected by the 1980s reformers is not unprecedented in the PRC. The Chinese reforms beginning in the late 1970s sought changes in important areas: bureaucratic organization, the scope of responsibility and definition of tasks of key bureaucracies, the distribution of bureaucratic resources, and the nature of the process by which decisions are made. In broad terms, the reform leadership of the country tried to make the system less personalized, less ideological, less centralized, and more sensitive to economic rewards for greater efficiency and dynamism.^[39]

But the bureaucracies under Mao also had to adapt to very different environments in terms of the intensity of ideological pressure,^[40] the openness to the outside world (i.e., to the USSR and Eastern Europe during the 1950s),^[41] the decision-making models they should follow,^[42] fiscal and budgetary environments,^[43] and so forth. In short, pressures for change of this magnitude have been a recurrent feature of China's

[39] See, e.g., Harry Harding, China's Second Revolution (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1987).

[40] See Schurmann, Ideology and Organization .

[41] See, e.g., O. B. Borisov and B. T. Koloskov, Sino-Soviet Relations, 1945–1973 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), on the extent of Soviet contact with Chinese governing bureaucracies.

[42] See Schurmann, Ideology and Organization , and Roy Grow, "The Politics of Industrial Development in China and the Soviet Union" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1973).

[43] Xu Yi and Chen Baosen, eds., Zhongguo de caizheng (China's Finance) (Beijing: People's Press, n.d.); and Audrey Donnithorne, China's Economic System (New York: Praeger, 1967).

bureaucratic world.^[44] As is detailed in this volume, moreover, the 1980s reforms achieved only part of their ambitious agenda for change.

The question concerning the extent to which the bureaucratic world detailed in this volume also characterized the Maoist period must, therefore, remain unanswered. Significant changes have undoubtedly occurred in some aspects of policy process, especially since the role of ideology in the system has diminished greatly and the reforms appear to have significantly flattened bureaucratic hierarchies. But there may be more continuity than we assume, and researchers should keep this possibility in mind as they undertake further studies on the Maoist era.

The system as described and analyzed in this volume probably will remain more constant in the future than changes in elite-level political rhetoric might suggest. It is made clear, for example, that, while there is no constitutional or even normative bar to the central leadership's radically altering the distribution of authority crafted by its predecessors, this would require either that one leader emerge as a new strongman or that strong agreement be reached among all the top leaders that the system should move in this new direction. Without such agreement, policy decisions will lack the clarity, consistency, and detail that are necessary to bring a high probability of lower-level compliance. Without such agreement at the very top, to put it differently, there is apt to be widespread sabotage of national directives by officials at each subnational level. If the top-level initiatives move the system toward a more centralized system producing less information, moreover, then lower levels will be in a position quietly to achieve greater degrees of freedom through manipulation of information that goes to the leadership. In short, by focusing on fundamental structure and process, we examine here factors that indicate that the Chinese system is not nearly as malleable as are the dynamics of political contention at the apex of the system.

At the time of this writing there is a possibility that China will experience dramatic political change in the coming years. The factors under scrutiny here are of such a fundamental nature, however, that to some extent any successor system is likely to embody many of the features and dynamics that are discussed in these pages. Major changes would, of course, be evident, but the issues explored would very likely retain significant salience even if leaders who reject communism were to govern China.

What About the Communist Party?

The Chinese constitution recognizes the Chinese Communist Party as the "sole leader" of the Chinese system. Even the major reform docu-

[44] See, e.g., Harry Harding, Organizing China .

ments, such as Zhao Ziyang's speech to the Thirteenth Party Congress,^[45] reserve for the Party the responsibility of making all key decisions, of checking on their implementation, and of retaining the power of appointment of individuals to every important post. Yet the actual state of the Party—its organization, work methods, and to some extent even its bureaucratic identity—remain matters on which there is little information and much confusion among foreign scholars.

Discussion of the Party is bedeviled, of course, by the difficulty of gaining access to information. The Chinese press during the 1980s became relatively frank about problems in the government, but it treated the Party gingerly. Broad comments about difficulties in the Party tended to be supported only with flimsy anecdotal data. Solid research—if any has been done—remains unavailable to foreign analysts. Foreigners themselves understandably have felt that probing the details of Party organization and functioning would stretch too far the hospitality they have been accorded by their Chinese hosts. Yet, as Susan Shirk indicates in chapter 3, it is terribly important to clarify the role and dynamics of the Party in the Chinese political system.

More attention must be paid to career mobility within the Party, personal characteristics of Party members, personal ranks in the Party, and other factors that affect relative authority and that therefore contour behavior of Party officials. In addition, much more effort must then be made to understand the procedures by which issues are considered within the Party and the views of various Party bodies. It is, of course, quite possible that the extent of the Party's role varies considerably by sector—probably being more important in propaganda, organization, public security, and rural work, and less important in the urban economy and the military (although even this may vary considerably over time). Only empirical research can determine this. Until this research is considerably more advanced than at present, however, all comments about the functioning and evolution of the Chinese system—indeed, about the structure of authority within that system—must be made with some caution.

In sum, the fact that even a volume such as this, which investigates in detail the decision-making process in various bureaucratic arenas, basically is forced to give little consideration to the Chinese Communist Party should be put high on the agenda of research in the China field, although it is difficult to be optimistic about how much can be learned about the Party in the environment of the early 1990s. Given the fact that in most government units the top Party officials are also the top govern-

[45] Text in Beijing Review 30, no. 45 (9–15 November 1987): 1–27.

ment officeholders, it may be that lack of direct consideration of the Party itself does not seriously distort our understanding of policy process. But future research should seek to provide the empirical base for determining whether (or to what extent) this is the case. This volume does not satisfactorily accomplish this task.

How About Chinese Culture and Society?

The analyses provided in these chapters typically make little or no reference to Chinese cultural characteristics. It has been argued that Chinese culture is crucial for understanding political and bureaucratic behavior in the PRC, as cultural approaches explain the nature of political alliances, expectations of political behavior, attitudes toward authority relations, and even the fundamental strength of political organizations.^[46] These authors probably would not argue against the idea that cultural factors affect the style and some other aspects of political and bureaucratic behavior. For example, the weakness of formal legal authority, the legitimacy of virtually unbridled concentration of power, and a proclivity toward negotiation may all be in part attributable to cultural influences. The authors nevertheless find that they do not have to utilize cultural variables to explain the major behavior patterns they identify.

There is also little consideration of the relations of state and society. The various chapters include careful analysis of the relationships among top leaders, key staff organs, and various bureaucratic units. The chapters by Naughton, Walder, and Zweig also address the issue of the relations between local government units and various enterprises. The focus here is explicitly on the political system and its internal dynamics, however, not on the relations between this system and the larger Chinese population.