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Manufacturing Society: How Party Building Reinforces Stability Maintenance in Grassroots China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2023

Yanling He  and
Zheng Wang Open the ORCID record for Zheng Wang [Opens in a new window]
Yanling He
Affiliation:
Peking University, and Renmin University of China, Beijing, China Renmin University of China, Beijing, China
Zheng Wang*
Affiliation:
Renmin University of China, Beijing, China
*
Corresponding author: Zheng Wang; Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

While China's efforts to maintain social stability by recruiting social elites and establishing Party branches in pre-existing social and market organizations have been thoroughly explored, much less attention has been devoted to how grassroots Party organizations (GRPOs) have proactively incubated society and constructed coherent, interrelated and systematic stability maintenance strategies to identify and eliminate social instability in its early stages and prevent its escalation. Using qualitative data gathered from local areas in China, we uncovered three major strategies used by GRPOs to manufacture society: incubating quasi-bureaucratic organizations, co-opting community elites and embedding Party organizations in market and social organizations. In general, GRPOs manufacture society for three reasons: to revitalize the mobilization capacity of the party-state; to increase the available social resources for grassroots authorities; and to establish an input mechanism for citizens. This study not only provides empirical data on how China's stability maintenance regime works in practice but also calls for a rethinking of the capacity of authoritarian resilience.

摘要

摘要

已有研究考察了中国政府通过在业已成立的社会和市场组织中吸纳社会精英、嵌入党组织以维持社会稳定的努力，但鲜有研究关注基层党组织如何前置性的孵化社会和构建一个连贯的、相关联结的和系统的稳定策略，从而在社会不稳定的早期阶段便将其识别和消解，以避免其进一步升级。基于中国多地的定性数据，本研究揭示了基层党组织“制造”社会的三个策略：孵化准行政的社会组织、吸纳社区精英和将党组织嵌入到社会和市场组织中。整体而言，基层党组织有三个动机 “制造” 社会：重新激活体制的动员能力；补充基层治理资源；建立民情民意的输入机制。本研究不仅为中国维稳体系如何运行提供了实证证据，同时呼吁重新认识中国体制的权威韧性。

Keywords

social stabilityParty buildingChinese Communist Party (CCP)grassroots Party organizationsgrassroots governance社会稳定党建中国共产党基层党组织基层治理
Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 259 , September 2024 , pp. 711 - 726
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of SOAS University of London

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