1.1 The Durability of the CCP in Comparative Context

Although democratization made significant advances around the globe in the twentieth century, progress in the last two decades has stalled. Currently, four-fifths of the world’s population lives in nondemocratic polities (Freedom House 2024, 10). Democracy promoters have come to realize that authoritarianism is an enduring phenomenon that cannot be vanquished by triumphalist thinking about the end of history (Fukuyama Reference Fukuyama1989). Therefore, an understanding of the sources of autocratic longevity is an urgent initial step for those who seek to develop strategies for democratic consolidation in the twenty-first century.

Comparative research demonstrates that there is significant variation in the lifespans of autocracies (Magaloni Reference Magaloni2006; Brownlee Reference Brownlee2007). A tripartite division of nondemocracies (no parties; multiple parties; single party) indicates that single-party regimes exhibit the highest longevity (Svolik Reference Svolik2012, 186). Within the group of single-party regimes, communist dictatorships have outlasted noncommunist autocracies, emerging as the most resilient type of nondemocratic system. There are notable differences in the durability of two different subsets of communist regimes (see Table 1). As is well known, most communist systems collapsed in 1989–91. Yet, China, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cuba have persisted for more than three decades since the end of the Cold War. As of 2024, the average tenure of these five single-party regimes is sixty-seven years. This is an extraordinary record of durability. China stands out even within this group of durable regimes. In 2023, it matched the longevity of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which ruled for seventy-four years. Only the Korean Workers Party has governed longer than the CCP, celebrating its seventy-fifth year in power in 2023.

Some might wonder whether China can still be usefully described as a communist state. The classic typology developed by scholars of dictatorships might be relevant to address this question (Friedrich and Brzezinski Reference Friedrich and Brzezinski1965, 22). Organizationally, the CCP today appears little different from the party that has ruled the country during the previous seven decades. There is no political pluralism and opposition parties are still proscribed. Central planning no longer exists, but the party exercises both direct and indirect control over economic activity. The CCP maintains a monopoly over the use of force and directs repression against regime enemies. Although Marxism‒Leninism is no longer the dominant ideology, the regime is committed to preventing harmful ideological influences from entering the country. The means of mass communication remain under the control of the party-state. In sum, though some scholars may see communist states as an anachronism, China today is a recognizable yet upgraded exemplar of this regime type.

Had China simply survived as a single-party state, its record of longevity past the watershed year of 1989 would have still required an explanation. Yet, it has thrived economically and has managed to contain discontent and calls for political liberalization. To understand this exceptional resilience, we need to identify the adaptive responses that have made it possible.

1.2 The Adaptive Capacity of the CCP

Scholarly understandings of the adaptive capacity of the CCP reflect the evolution of the discipline of political science. Until the Eastern European and Soviet collapses, the general consensus was that communist regimes will persist (Kuran Reference Kuran1991), regardless of whether scholars conceptualized them as totalitarian polities incapable of evolution (Friedrich and Brzezinski Reference Friedrich and Brzezinski1965) or acknowledged the possibility of dynamic change (Bunce Reference Bunce1981; Oi Reference Oi1985; Hauslohner Reference Hauslohner1987). In a sharp reversal, following the Soviet collapse, political scientists began to doubt the staying power of the remaining communist regimes, including that in China. Scholars anticipated a coming collapse (Chang Reference Chang2001), variously attributed to rising prosperity (Rowen Reference Rowen1996), disaffected elites (Gilley Reference Gilley2004), or socioeconomic pressures fueled by extreme corruption stemming from the lack of political reform (Pei Reference Pei2006). The tenor of these arguments maintained that ossification prevented dynamic change. However, simultaneous with such pessimistic accounts of China’s future, two novel propositions have emerged. One stresses the resilience of the system, focusing on the increasingly predictable and meritocratic nature of elite politics, on the more clearly specified mandates of institutions, and on opportunities for citizen participation (Nathan Reference Nathan2003). Another proposition emphasizes the atrophy of the CCP after the Soviet collapse but it also suggests that there have been signs of adaptation, especially in the realm of inner-party democracy and ideological acceptance of capitalists (Shambaugh Reference Shambaugh2008). The field of China studies thus entered the 2010s with the two images of resilience and adaptation. In contrast to the 1990s, the consensus in the 2010s was that China was not threatened by imminent collapse.

The 2010s and early 2020s have been marked by a search to identify the reasons for the resilience of the Chinese political system (Hsu, Tsai, and Chang Reference Hsu, Tsai and Chang2021). Considering the complexity of the issue, there are variations in the following explanations. Some scholars point to repression and social control (Mattingly Reference Mattingly2020; Ong Reference Ong2022; Byler Reference Byler2022), as well as to the co-optation of religious organizations (Reny Reference Reny2018). Others develop arguments about the regime-sustaining effects of economic growth (Ang Reference Ang2020). Those studying elite politics stress the skillful management of factional conflict and rivalries (Fewsmith Reference Fewsmith2021; Shih Reference Shih2022). Popular support for the party and its domestic and foreign policies is highlighted as well (Dickson Reference Dickson2016; Reference Dickson2021; Shirk Reference Shirk2007; Reference Shirk2023; Weiss Reference Weiss2014). With regard to adaptation, some scholars emphasize the repurposing or retrofitting of institutions (Oi and Goldstein 2018; Gueorguiev Reference Gueorguiev2021), whereas others focus on experimentation in governance techniques, what they call a “guerrilla policy style” (Heilmann and Perry Reference Heilmann and Oi2011).

How does the present Element relate to existing studies of adaptation and resilience? According to Heilmann and Perry, resilience is “the capacity of a system to experience and absorb shocks and disturbances,” whereas adaptability is “the capacity of actors in a system to further resilience” (Heilmann and Perry Reference Heilmann and Oi2011, 8). I adopt a different view, conceptualizing resilience as the long-term outcome of adaptive change (Dimitrov Reference Dimitrov2013, 7). Adaptive change refers to a complex causal process that involves experiencing a shock and then implementing changes in light of the lessons learned from that shock. The approach of this Element bears similarities to those of Shambaugh (Reference Shambaugh2008) and Dickson (Reference Dickson2016) who respectively describe the doctrinal adjustments and practical steps that have allowed the promotion of private entrepreneurial activity as a type of adaptive change implemented by the CCP during reform and opening following the shock of Mao’s ill-considered economic policies. Before we proceed further, we should stress that this Element does not seek to provide a historical treatment of the evolution of the CCP (Saich Reference Saich2021) or of the complex ways in which the CCP manages Chinese society (Dickson Reference Dickson2021). Its goals are squarely focused on the adaptive responses the CCP has deployed since 1989 to avert the collapse of the single-party model of rule in China.

Building on existing studies that highlight individual adaptations, this Element offers a unified framework for understanding earlier arguments by highlighting the specific adaptations undertaken in response to 1989. “Adaptation” is often used loosely in the literature. The Merriam-Webster definition is “modification of an organism or its parts that makes it more fit for existence under the conditions of its environment.” The definition that this Element adopts encompasses the policy changes instituted by the CCP in light of the lessons learned from the shock of 1989, which produced the fundamental insight that communist regimes cannot avoid collapse without proactive measures. The focus here is the specific effects of 1989. At the same time, the approach is broad because it reveals that the scale of the shock necessitated learning general lessons which subsequently led to a set of wide-ranging adaptations (of the economy, of welfare provision, of the ideological sphere, and of party building) that may appear unconnected unless one looks at them through the unified prism of the CCP’s reactions to the momentous events of 1989. The unanticipated near-collapse of communism in China and its surprising demise in two-thirds of the countries constituting the communist universe necessitated introducing comprehensive measures aimed at ensuring the continued dominance of the CCP. Our discussion of these adaptive policy responses forms the core of this Element.

1.3 Learning from 1989

The CCP has implemented adaptive changes in response to shocks at various points in China’s political development. Apart from 1989, there have been other turbulent times in China’s political history that have led to adaptations. A major contender for that status is 1976, when Chairman Mao died. How do 1976 and 1989 differ? Unquestionably, the death of China’s founding leader was a significant event. Nevertheless, while unprecedented in the Chinese context, such a crisis also occurred in various other communist regimes prior to 1976 and was, invariably, successfully resolved. The Chinese leadership operated with full knowledge of these historical precedents. Although other types of autocracies may be unable to survive the death of a founding leader (Meng Reference Meng2020), there is no evidence that this has ever occurred in the communist universe. In China, as in the Soviet Union after the death of Stalin, the demise of Mao led to elite reshuffling and opened an opportunity for adopting a softer governance model. By contrast, 1989 presented a crisis that was potentially insurmountable. At stake was not only who China’s next leader would be but also the viability of the entire political system. The domestic and international events of 1989 presented an existential threat to the CCP and its single-party model. Surviving the shock of 1989 required substantially more wide-ranging adaptations than the relatively less threatening death of the founding leader in 1976. Other shocks have been experienced in the decades since 1989 as well: Falun Gong in 1999; the democracy and minority rights movements in 2008; and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and COVID-19 public health crises in 2003 and 2020–22. However, these shocks pale in comparison to the existential challenge presented by the events of 1989.

In 1989, the CCP experienced a dual shock. The initial component was domestic, as China was rocked by protests that directly challenged the top party leadership and called for political liberalization along the lines of glasnost in the Soviet Union. There was also urban worker discontent, which stemmed from high inflation and from plans to proceed with marketization by dismantling lifetime state employment and the accompanying cradle-to-grave benefits known as the “iron rice bowl” (tie fanwan). The party weathered the nationwide protests of April–June 1989 successfully. Yet, there was a second shock which was more protracted and whose impact on the party was less straightforward. That second process began on June 4, 1989, the day when the leadership, with the help of tanks, cleared Tiananmen Square of all protesters. Ironically, June 4, 1989, was also the day when Solidarity won a surprising victory in the first round of elections in communist Poland. That win set in motion the collapse of other communist regimes and concluded with the dissolution of the Soviet Union on Christmas Day 1991. In this Element, references to the international aspects of “1989” encompass the entire 1989–91 period which saw the collapse of ten communist regimes (Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Mongolia, Poland, Romania, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia). Those international events placed in context what had occurred domestically in China in 1989, revealing that the entire system was in danger. As communist regimes were disappearing around the world (due to political and socioeconomic contention combined with leadership divisions and minority unrest in ethnically heterogeneous regimes), there was growing uncertainty among Chinese leaders about the long-term viability of the single-party model. This necessitated lesson-learning and subsequent implementation of relevant adaptive changes.

We should define what constitutes “learning.” In the behavioral and brain sciences, learning refers to the acquisition of behavior that allows an animal to solve a particular problem (like feeding) that results from a change in the environment (Johnston Reference Johnston1981). The parallel with China is clear: 1989 produced a catastrophic change in the environment (both domestic and international events demonstrated that communist regimes were more fragile than previously thought) that presented the problem of how to develop behavior that would allow the CCP to ensure its survival. The adaptations reviewed in this Element were implemented with the conscious goal of avoiding regime collapse. The process of learning has been iterative, with ongoing attention by China’s top leaders to any threats to communist rule, as revealed by the paradigmatic case of 1989. A counterfactual might be useful here: had 1989 not occurred, the leadership would not have been compelled to engage in the recursive in-depth discussions that generated dynamic lessons leading to the specific adaptations discussed throughout this Element. We may want to recall that Francis Fukuyama, writing immediately before Tiananmen, saw China as the place where history would end due to the inevitable pressures for political reform generated by the flourishing of economic liberalism (Fukuyama Reference Fukuyama1989, esp. 11–12). Without 1989 and without learning from what occurred, China might not be a communist regime today.

1.4 Evidence of Learning: Internal Chinese Assessments of the Soviet Collapse

Authoritarian regimes are characterized by a culture of secrecy. This presents a methodological problem for those studying China: How can we identify with a reasonable degree of certainty how the CCP views a certain issue? Two options exist. The first is to rely on what has been called “public artefacts” (Barros Reference Barros2016), such as easily accessible speeches, official government documents, and reports in the state media. Although important research has been done using such materials, analysts must be mindful when interpreting public artefacts that they are equivocal sources. Especially relevant within a culture of secrecy is the fact that the party has decided to make these documents publicly accessible, thus raising questions about why they have been allowed to circulate. As scholars cannot easily get clear answers to such questions, interpreting public artefacts is not straightforward. A second option for studying polities characterized by opacity is to rely on government documents not meant for public dissemination. In China, these sources are generally known as neibu (for internal circulation), although there can be various levels of classification that exceed neibu, such as jimi (secret) and juemi (top secret). Scholars have used such leaked government documents to study issues like the 1989 Tiananmen protests (Zhang Reference Zhang2001), the Xinjiang camps (Uyghur Tribunal 2021), and propaganda (King, Pan, and Roberts Reference Gary, Pan and Roberts2017; Pan and Chen Reference Pan and Chen2018). Typically, neibu materials can be found in repositories in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the United States, and Europe. Because the documents are generated with no expectation that they will fall into outsiders’ hands, neibu sources have the potential to reveal what regime insiders think (Dimitrov Reference Dimitrov2023). This Element makes use of such materials.

These materials show that Deng Xiaoping and his successors Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping have all been deeply concerned about the importance of the CCP learning from the demise of the Soviet Union (Dimitrov Reference Dimitrov, Piotr and Kunakhovich2019). Dozens of leadership speeches have been delivered and thousands of academic articles and books have been published on the lessons of the Soviet collapse (Guan Reference Guan, Thomas and Li2010). There have even been several high-profile neibu documentaries that were screened to party cadres, highlighting the lessons that top leaders wanted them to draw from the Soviet dissolution. Although more than three decades have elapsed since this event, it remains important to the present. Studying the Soviet collapse and learning from it is not an arcane academic question. Rather, it is of existential importance to the CCP.

The paramount lesson focuses on the imperative of preserving the CCP monopoly on power, with the corollary that political liberalization is not to be allowed. Specifically, the voluminous analyses can be reduced to two additional overarching conclusions. The first concerns the economy: ongoing gradual marketization with attention to the losers from the reforms is necessary. This stands in contrast to the big-bang approach to dismantling the state socialist economies, which is accompanied by extraordinary social costs. The second lesson comprises the importance of maintaining ideological vigilance against hostile foreign forces (didui shili) bent on subverting the single-party system through a strategy of peaceful evolution (heping yanbian) (Zuo Reference Fengrong2022). In combination with repression, these strategies (focusing on party building, economic reform, welfare provision, and cultural security) have ensured the stability of single-party rule in China. The implementation of such strategies requires ongoing adaptations, which are discussed in the remainder of this section.

1.5 Specific Adaptations Implemented after 1989

The CCP deployed four adaptative responses, consistent with the major conclusions it had reached by analyzing the events of 1989. The first adaptation stems from the understanding that the scope of the inefficient centrally planned economy had to be reduced in favor of allowing more space for the market. We should keep in mind that there was significant opposition to reform, fueled in part by negative attitudes toward the former Soviet Union and several Eastern European states that had adopted a program of radical economic restructuring, known as the “Harvard Plan,” as its key architects Jeffrey Sachs and Andrei Shleifer were based at the Harvard Institute for International Development. After prolonged deliberation, the party had to proceed with economic reform carefully but firmly. Within two decades, the private sector became China’s dominant employer and contributed more than half of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP). Yet, this process of expansion faced clear redlines: entrepreneurs could not have full economic autonomy; could not use their riches to obtain political power; and could not operate without creating party cells. The party maintained and bolstered state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in strategic industries even after China’s World Trade Organization (WTO) entry, as we discuss in Section 2. The private sector has not been allowed to challenge the primacy of the CCP. This stands in marked contrast to the experience of post-Soviet Russia, where the oligarchs literally moved into the Kremlin under Yeltsin and “captured the state” (Freeland Reference Freeland2000; Klebnikov Reference Klebnikov2000; Hoffman Reference Hoffman2002).

A related second adaptation involves protecting the reform losers by extending the social safety net (Duckett Reference Duckett2011; Cook and Dimitrov Reference Dimitrov2017; Huang Reference Ang2020). One reason for the Tiananmen unrest was the uncertainty among workers regarding how they might be affected by the bankruptcies of urban enterprises that would inevitably accompany the transition from plan to market (Walder and Gong Reference Walder and Xiaoxia1991). To soften the impact of job losses and the dismantling of preexisting welfare benefits, the party delayed reform of the inefficient urban industrial enterprises until the second half of the 1990s. Urban workers were allowed to purchase, at submarket rates, their enterprise-supplied housing and were given a generous period of time to be retrained for new positions. In the 2000s and 2010s, benefits like healthcare and pensions, which under Mao had been reserved primarily for urban workers, came to be extended nearly universally. This major expansion was driven by the necessity of maintaining stability, which emerged from the domestic shock of 1989 and from analyses of the experience of the transitional economies of Eastern Europe, where the dismantling of the extremely generous socialist welfare state, along with widespread unemployment and hyperinflation, cultivated significant levels of opposition to the market economy and led to the voting out of office of those political elites who were promoting it. The CCP did not want to find itself left in a similar position.

The third adaptation stems from the understanding that the events of 1989, both domestically and in the Eastern Bloc, reflected the impact of external ideological subversion (Guojia Anquan Bu Reference Guojia Anquan1990b; Guojia Anquan Bu Reference Guojia Anquan1991). Foreign cultural products were seen as conduits for the promotion of Western values that presented a direct threat to the party-state. Instead of relying solely on censorship of foreign media, the CCP also promoted the consumption of indigenous cultural products. Propaganda officials took this responsibility very seriously and issued follow-up directives to both the educational system and the media. Schools and universities were tasked with undertaking patriotic education (Koesel Reference Koesel, Koesel, Bunce and Weiss2020), while traditional and new media were entrusted with promoting cultural confidence (wenhua zixin). From a more instrumental point of view, the idea behind indigenous cultural consumption was that it is able to distract citizens from looking for Western cultural products. Those who doubt the importance of ideology in contemporary China should keep in mind that under Xi Jinping safeguarding cultural security (wenhua anquan) has been declared to be a component of protecting state security. This reflects the seriousness with which the CCP deals with external cultural influences.

The final adaptation is perhaps the most important, as it concerns the core of the political system. Political pluralism in Eastern Europe put an end to the monopoly of the communist party on power by allowing for the existence of multiple parties. In turn this precipitated the fall of the entire system. The dominant strategy adopted by the CCP to preclude such a development was rival incorporation (Magaloni Reference Magaloni2006). To block independent associational life, the CCP absorbed potential challengers like private entrepreneurs (Hou Reference Hou2019; Koss Reference Koss2021), religious devotees (Vala Reference Vala2017), and members of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) into the party (Xin and Huang Reference Xin and Huang2022), which has doubled in size since 1987, reaching more than ninety-nine million members by the end of 2023 (Zhonggong Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2024). Although the strategy of co-optation has not been problem-free, especially with regard to certain ethnic minorities and intellectuals who are critical of the system (Leibold Reference Leibold2020), CCP flexibility in terms of inclusion helps minimize the rise of alternative political movements outside the party. Cumulatively, along with repression (discussed in Section 1.7 and Section 6.2), these four adaptations form the bedrock of the party’s post-1989 resilience.

1.6 Implications for Political Reform

When discussing the adaptive responses that the CCP undertook, we should also be mindful that the CCP never tolerated political pluralism. Independent political movements like the China Democracy Party or Charter 08 have been promptly quashed. Analysts have placed faith in the prospect of inner-party democracy and retirement norms to create more transparency and accountability within the party (Manion Reference Manion1993; Shambaugh Reference Shambaugh2008) and perhaps as a first step toward some type of softening of the political system. Although there were grounds for such optimism in the 1990s and 2000s, under Xi Jinping any notions of either inner-party democracy or retirement norms have proven to be paper tigers (Fewsmith Reference Fewsmith2021), especially after Xi secured a norm-breaking third term as general secretary at the Twentieth CCP Congress in 2022.

Other avenues of potential political opening include NGOs, organized religion, and the media. But the regime has made sure that they would not pose a threat to its authority. The scope of operations by NGOs has been reduced to apolitical matters, such as social service provision. Because they are more likely to spread politically harmful ideas, foreign-funded NGOs have been greatly constrained. In addition, organized religious activities have been co-opted by the government through the Sinicization of religion. Some Protestant house churches are allowed to operate (Reny Reference Reny2018), but only under strict police supervision and as long as they remain small and informal. Turning to the media, we note that although there were some signs of liberalization in the 1990s, and even in the early 2000s, independent journalistic reporting has been extinguished from mainstream print, electronic, and digital media under Xi Jinping. Overall, the avenues that led to political liberalization in other authoritarian states have been closed off in China.

1.7 The Limits of Adaptation: Is Repression the New Normal?

The focus of this Element is on how the four adaptative responses to 1989 have helped to extend the lifespan of the CCP. As we think about the future of China, we should note that each of these adaptations is showing signs of diminishing effectiveness. First, economic reform has generally stalled, with some sectors, like fintech, e-commerce, and ridesharing services, even experiencing a rollback. The anti-corruption campaign has resulted in both the ordinary rich and the tycoons confronting significant property and personal insecurity. It is not clear whether the high levels of growth can be sustained as the state reasserts control over economic activity. Second, the extreme sectoral and geographic inequalities in welfare provision have fueled discontent. This situation is aggravated by the land grabs and demolition of housing by rapacious local governments pursuing lucrative redevelopment projects. Access to housing in the cities and to land in the rural areas are both understood as fundamental welfare rights that cannot be curtailed without resulting in widespread dissatisfaction, which thus far has been directed against the local rather than the central government. But there are no guarantees that the status quo can be preserved indefinitely. Moving to the adaptation of cultural security, recent steps toward limiting access to entertainment targeting effeminate pop stars and computer games may backfire in ways that the censoring of political content has not – in part because the purpose of promoting entertainment is to distract citizens from searching for politically subversive media content. Finally, rival incorporation is facing significant roadblocks in terms of critical intellectuals, ethnic minorities, and Hong Kong citizens.

What are the implications of these trends? The short-term response has been an increase in both physical and digitally facilitated repression. Businesspeople considered insufficiently deferential to the party are either arrested or disappear (Xu Reference Yan2023), as discussed in Section 2. Welfare protests very rarely result in accommodation or concessions (Dimitrov and Zhang Reference Zhang2021). All types of censorship have increased (Roberts Reference Roberts2018). Furthermore, rivals that cannot be incorporated are subjected to surveillance, detention, incarceration, and persecution (Roberts Reference Roberts2020; Uyghur Tribunal 2021).

A novel feature of the repression in China is the interweaving of high-tech and traditional forms of surveillance to protect political and social order. In 2018, a new initiative of “constructing a peaceful China” (ping’an Zhongguo jianshe) was unrolled under the guidance of the CCP Political and Legal Affairs Commission. The aim is to use the feed from surveillance cameras and the intelligence collected through informants to enable grid captains and other grid personnel to maintain law and order, a broad concept that extends from identifying political opponents to solving problems of vagrancy and uncivil behavior. The construction of “peaceful China” has capitalized on the human and technological infrastructure that undergirded the 2.498 million grids (wangge) that extended through China’s urban and rural territory as of 2019. It also reinvigorated foundational Maoist ideas of mass mobilization for public security work (known as “the Fengqiao experience”), whose current instantiation involves CCP-sanctioned grassroot vigilantism and the collection of intelligence through “peaceful China” volunteer groups (Zhongyang Zhengfawei Bangongting Reference Zhengfawei Bangongting2021a; Reference Zhengfawei Bangongting2021b). The decision in 2023 to create a Social Work Department under the CCP will further strengthen these initiatives, as this department will be in charge of guiding grassroots party building, social governance, and managing social volunteers, including informants.

Is repression the new normal? The COVID-19 pandemic has complicated the answer to this question, as it justified further crackdowns on freedom of expression and assembly under the guise of protecting public health. With the ending of zero-COVID in 2023, a pressing question was whether the hardening of the repressive system enabled by the pandemic would persist in the post-COVID-19 period. Although ubiquitous surveillance, artificial intelligence (AI) policing, and social order blacklists are here to stay (Arsène Reference Arsène2019; Jee Reference Jee2022; Kim and Lorentzen Reference Kim and Lorentzen2023), we must also be mindful that repression is not sustainable as a long-term governance strategy. This means that, for the CCP to stay in power, it will either have to develop new adaptations or it will need to go down a path of gradual political liberalization.

1.8 Structure of the Element

This introductory section is followed by four sections that discuss respectively the main adaptive responses deployed by the CCP in the aftermath of 1989: economic liberalization; welfare expansion; cultural security; and rival incorporation. Each section analyzes how the specific adaptation has contributed to resilience. In addition, each section deals with the question of whether the utility of the adaptive response has reached its end. The concluding section revisits China’s impressive record of resilience but also highlights signs showing that the adaptive capacity of the party is waning. This final section summarizes the lessons from the CCP’s controlled adaptation and outlines pathways for a potential malfunctioning of the strategies to achieve resilience following the shock of 1989. As a whole, this Element sheds light on the adaptive responses that have allowed the CCP to persist to this day and provides an assessment of their capacity to ensure CCP longevity in the future.

2.1 Comparative Perspectives on Reforming State-Owned Firms in Centrally Planned Economies

China is not unique in terms of the challenges it faced in connection with its economic reforms. Such challenges have emerged in all communist regimes with centrally planned economies. In the 1990s, following the prescriptions of the Washington Consensus, the formerly socialist Eastern European regimes undertook rapid privatization of state-owned industrial assets (Orenstein Reference Orenstein2001). Two negative side effects accompanied this process. One was the extraordinary social costs in the form of layoffs and loss of welfare entitlements (Cook Reference Cook1993), thereby making the reforms extremely unpopular (Ost Reference Ost2006). Another was the powerholders’ loss of control over state assets. In extreme cases, this led to state capture (Freeland Reference Freeland2000; Klebnikov Reference Klebnikov2000; Hoffman Reference Hoffman2002; Dimitrov Reference Dimitrov2017).

After closely studying the Eastern European reform experience, China was committed to minimizing the social costs of the transition and to preventing the rise of oligarchs who could hold the party hostage (Weber Reference Weber2021; Zhang Reference Zhang2021). Executing these twin goals required careful planning, thus delaying the reforms by nearly a decade. It was not until 1997 that SOE restructuring began in earnest. Even then, no Eastern European-style big-bang approach was implemented. The CCP remained in charge of the process, spearheading enterprise transformation into shareholding companies (corporatization) and subsequently allowing partial privatization of smaller SOEs. This stands in marked contrast to the plunder of state resources that took place in Russia in the 1990s. Delaying the start of privatization and carefully managing it once it was underway also meant that the regime was able to limit the social costs of the market transition. Although there was discontent among those who had been laid off without receiving adequate compensation (Hurst Reference Hurst2009), the extent of dissatisfaction was manageable in comparison to the worker protests and strikes that erupted throughout the former Eastern Bloc during the implementation of shock therapy in the 1990s (Ost Reference Ost2006).

Although China proved to be more adept in its integration with the global economy than Eastern Europe, its entry into the WTO in 2001 presented some challenges. Economic activity became significantly more rule-bound (Steinfeld Reference Steinfeld2010), yet protectionism survived in various forms. Foreigners faced numerous onerous requirements when attempting to provide services like banking, insurance, and telecommunications. Strategic sectors, such as mining and the extractive industries, as well as certain types of manufacturing, were also protected. Subsidies were provided to agriculture, fisheries, and large industrial enterprises. Unveiled in 2015, the Made in China 2025 (Zhongguo Zhizao 2025) initiative further extended protection to the high-tech sectors, such as information technology, robotics, green vehicles, aerospace engineering, and new materials (United States Office of the Trade Representative 2023). The party took an activist approach to the Chinese economy, managing firms that were entrusted with national security functions. Growing securitization and civil–military fusion (Pearson, Rithmire, and Tsai Reference Margaret, Rithmire and Tsai2023) also meant shielding firms from foreign competition.

2.2 The Size of the Private Economy

Considering that the economic reforms were introduced more than four decades ago, we should be able to provide information about the size of the private sector. Xi Jinping has publicized one set of numbers, which indicate that the private sector accounts for more than 50 percent of tax receipts, 60 percent of GDP, 70 percent of innovation, 80 percent of urban employment, and 90 percent of enterprises (Zhonggong Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2021b, 523). The problem with such statistics is that they lack clarity in terms of the meaning of “private”: it can refer to general categories such as civilian-run enterprises (minying qiye) or nonstate firms (fei gongyouzhi qiye), which then can be further subdivided into a broad array of firms ranging from sole proprietorships (geti gongshang hu) to privately owned firms (siying qiye) and Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and foreign-invested firms (gang’ao taishang/waishang qiye). To complicate matters further, there may be privately owned companies that have been spun off from conglomerates known as business groups (qiye jituan), even though the parent remains state-owned (Keister Reference Keister2000; Oi Reference Oi2011, 6). Under Xi Jinping, the party has promoted the idea of “mixed ownership,” which involves a mutual fusion of state, collective, and nonpublic capital (Pearson, Rithmire, and Tsai Reference Margaret, Rithmire and Tsai2020, 15). In light of these definitional challenges, it is difficult to produce precise estimates of the size of the private sector in China. Perhaps more important than the exact contribution of nonstate businesses to the economy is how the CCP has approached SOEs and nonstate firms since 1989.

2.3 Cooperative Party–Business Relations, 1992–2012

We can make several general observations about party–business relations from Deng’s 1992 Southern Tour to Xi Jinping’s assumption of power in 2012. First, state-owned firms remained a priority. This means that they continued to receive extensive support from the government. Although they were corporatized following passage of the Company Law in 1993 and partially privatized after the Fifteenth Party Congress in 1997, they continued to benefit from financial injections through the state banking system, the State Asset Supervision Administration of China (SASAC), and local asset supervision administrations. The desire to create national champions means that business groups that emerged from the SOEs continued to receive extensive government support even after China’s 2001 entry into the WTO. Second, technology companies, many of which had been established with overseas venture capital, also benefited from government support in the form of limiting and eventually blocking Western competitors from market access. Third, small firms were exposed to a survival-of-the-fittest model. The TVEs, which had been the engine of growth prior to 1989, were either privatized or went bankrupt. Single proprietorships and small private firms found it difficult to obtain bank loans, but most were able to survive and adapt. FDI continued to flow in. Although it favored the SOEs, the party played the role of a general facilitator over a wide range of entrepreneurial activity.

Most remarkable about this period is that, even though business grew substantially, it did not challenge the party-state. Major SOEs and large private companies enjoyed a cooperative relationship with the government. The powerful military–business complex was placed under civilian control (Mulvenon Reference Mulvenon2001). Billionaires began to emerge in the 1990s and their number increased throughout the 2000s (Zhang Reference Zhang2021). The superrich were co-opted by the party with positions on local- and central-level legislative bodies and were largely left to enjoy their wealth (Hou Reference Hou2019; Zhang Reference Zhang2021; Xu Reference Yan2023). Although corruption thrived, it was conducive to growth (Wedeman Reference Wedeman2012; Ang Reference Ang2016; Reference Ang2020). Businesspeople were no democrats, as they expressed no interest in opposing the party-state, which was allowing them to prosper (Dickson Reference Dickson2003; Reference Dickson2008; Tsai Reference Tsai2007). Both sides thus benefited from a symbiotic relationship in which the state facilitated business success and in turn business delivered the high levels of GDP growth that were essential for a party whose legitimacy was closely tied to economic performance. This equilibrium would change once Xi Jinping assumed power.

2.4 Party–Business Relations under Xi Jinping

Perhaps the most notable feature of business–government relations under Xi Jinping is that the party has become directly involved in the management of nonstate firms. Although the initial indicia of the transition to this hands-on approach emerged before the 2010s, the Xi administration made it clear that this was the new normal. This led scholars to update their descriptions of the essence of business–government relations in the 2010s. Specifically, whereas the pre-2012 period and the first two years of the Xi administration are characterized as “state capitalism” (Naughton and Tsai Reference Naughton and Tsai2015; Kurlantzick Reference Kurlantzick2016), the post-2015 era is described as “party-state capitalism” (Blanchette Reference Blanchette2020; Pearson, Rithmire, and Tsai Reference Margaret, Rithmire and Tsai2020; Reference Dimitrov2023) in order to capture the shift from state dirigisme to capitalism “more directly in the service of the party’s political survival” (Pearson, Rithmire, and Tsai Reference Margaret, Rithmire and Tsai2020, 6).

The establishment of party cells in private firms is the most palpable indicator of CCP interest in becoming involved in the management of private business. Of particular note are situations in which the party secretary and the firm president (or chair of the board) are the same person (see Section 5 of this Element).

Other mechanisms of control are less direct but nevertheless highly effective. First, scholars have noted the financialization of government institutions, which allows the state to have influence over both SOEs and nonstate firms by purchasing minority shares through vehicles such as state capital investment and operations companies (guoyou ziben touzi, yunying gongsi) as well as industrial guidance funds (chanye yindao jijin) (Naughton Reference Naughton, Fingar and Oi2020, 64–66). A second mechanism of control came with the creation of special management shares that gave the party-state leverage over technology giants like Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu (Pearson, Rithmire, and Tsai Reference Margaret, Rithmire and Tsai2020, 12). Government oversight offices at nonstate firms are a third mechanism of control and a concrete manifestation of the rise of the “investor state” in the 2010s (Chen and Rithmire Reference Chen and Rithmire2020).

Scholars have pointed out that additional evidence of the party–business nexus is provided by the fact that private firms have been called upon to carry out strategic tasks such as surveillance, social credit, and poverty alleviation, whose successful execution is directly related to the paramount goal of stability maintenance (Pearson, Rithmire, and Tsai Reference Margaret, Rithmire and Tsai2020). Nonstate firms have displayed a willingness to collaborate with the regime on issues that range from censorship (Gallagher and Miller Reference Gallagher and Miller2021; Ruan et al. Reference Ruan, Crete-Nishihata, Knockel, Xiong and Dalek2021) to fintech regulation (Jing Wang Reference Wang2021). Companies that have resisted, like Ant Financial, have been punished. From the vantage point of 2024, it is clear that Xi Jinping is interested in using all firms, regardless of ownership type, to advance his vision of promoting the strategic sectors, including environmental protection, new energy, biotechnology, and information systems. This grand steerage fits nicely with the economic and technological self-sufficiency projects, such as dual circulation (guonei guoji shuang xunhuan) and Made in China 2025 (García Herrero Reference García Herrero2021; Naughton Reference Naughton, Fingar and Oi2020). To remain successful, firms must support those party initiatives.

2.5 An Aggressive Turn: The Assault on Tech and Alienation of the Superrich

The general understanding of business–government relations in contemporary China is that they are symbiotic and that therefore neither ordinary entrepreneurs nor the superrich would benefit from challenging the primacy of the CCP that has allowed them to accumulate wealth (Tsai Reference Tsai2007; Dickson Reference Dickson2008; Hou Reference Hou2019; Zhang Reference Zhang2021). Although this is a reasonable argument, two recent trends call into question the ongoing capacity of the party-state to maintain this equilibrium. One is the assault on platform companies and the other is the arrest and imprisonment of several high-profile tycoons.

The regulatory crackdown on technology companies took place in 2020–21 and affected major firms like Alibaba, Tencent, JD.com, Didi, and Meituan. These cases have been highly publicized, so we can review them briefly here. First, the IPO of Alibaba’s Ant Financial was blocked following public criticism by Jack Ma, the main founder of the Alibaba Group, of the Chinese financial regulatory system. Second, tech giant Tencent lost significant share value when the government blocked its planned foray into online education and limited its computer games business. Furthermore, the ride-hailing company Didi was the subject of a regulatory probe after it listed overseas, and the delivery company Meituan was investigated on anticompetitiveness grounds. Cumulatively, the crackdown erased US$1.5 trillion in value from the stocks of the affected companies (The Economist 2022).

These costly decisions may appear to be irrational, but deeper investigation reveals their logic. Ant Financial assumed the functions of a banking institution without insuring itself against financial risk. Considering that it rapidly amassed 15 percent of all outstanding consumer loans in China, a potential default would have created heightened risk for political instability (The Economist 2022). Tencent’s plans to expand into education infringed on the party’s monopoly over the ideological sphere, which includes the education sector (see Section 4 of this Element). The conglomerate’s venture into online games also clashed with the party’s desire to limit the time Chinese citizens spend playing computer games. Finally, Didi angered the party by seeking foreign rather than domestic financing. Although the assault on tech appeared to have eased off in 2022 and 2023, the 2020–21 episode had clear significance, namely, the party was sending a costly signal to the platform industry that it could not set its own rules. Quite the opposite: tech was required to respect the regulatory framework put in place by the communist party. In addition, platform companies were expected to engage in R&D and engineering innovation rather than in perfecting their online business model. A case in point is Baidu, best known for its search engine, which was awarded China’s first driverless ride-hailing license (The Economist 2022). The CCP, not the tech companies, is in the driver’s seat.

The second episode is the arrest of high-profile tycoons. Although no precise tally is available, one scholar estimates that between 2008 and 2017 one-fifth of the 124 tycoons in his sample were convicted, detained, or implicated in corruption (Xu Reference Yan2023, 610). Some additional features of this phenomenon can be discerned from both Chinese and Western accounts that have emerged about it in the past decade. Even if officially these billionaires are brought to justice because they are corrupt, a closer look reveals two patterns. One involves individuals who were part of the networks of disgraced or retired politicians. An example is Whitney Duan (Duan Weihong), who was close to the family of former Premier Wen Jiabao and to fallen Chongqing Party Secretary Sun Zhengcai (Shum Reference Shum2021). Another is the case of Xiao Jianhua, a “banker to the elite,” who was abducted by mainland state security officials from the Four Seasons Hotel in Hong Kong in 2017 and was sentenced to thirteen years of imprisonment for financial crimes in 2022.Footnote ¹ Xiao is rumored to have been close to the Jiang Zemin leadership faction. The case of Guo Wengui/Miles Kwok, who escaped a certain arrest in China by moving to New York City (where he enjoyed the high life for a decade, until he was eventually convicted of defrauding investors in 2024), is another illustration of the sorry fate that awaits tycoons whose patrons (in his case Vice-Minister of State Security Ma Jian) lose power. This may explain why Wang Jianlin, who was once dubbed the richest man in Asia, built broad networks that involve both politicians who are currently in power and leaders who have retired (Forsythe Reference Forsythe2015). Wang’s real-estate and entertainment fortune has decreased in recent years, but he remains free, unlike other prominent tycoons who backed the wrong elite faction.

The other oligarchs who have suffered under Xi Jinping are those who were imprisoned for being outspoken. Two cases, both handled in 2020–21, are relevant here: one is the case of real-estate mogul Ren Zhiqiang and the other is the case of the pig- and chicken-farming billionaire Sun Dawu. Both men were sentenced to eighteen-year prison terms, Ren in 2020 on charges of corruption and Sun in 2021 for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” But both had also irked the CCP, one by challenging Xi Jinping’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic (Ren) and the other by talking about democracy (Sun) (British Broadcasting Corporation 2020; 2021).

What lessons can we draw from these illustrative cases? All of these tycoons were likely corrupt, but corruption is not the reason for their imprisonment. The CCP has been waging anti-corruption struggles since the 1930s, when it controlled only the revolutionary base areas, which constituted no more than 1 percent of the territory of China (Carothers Reference Carothers2022). Corruption is an essential ingredient of China’s economic model (Ang Reference Ang2016; Reference Ang2020), which means that any leader who is genuinely committed to stamping it out risks a severe slowdown in growth (Wang and Yan Reference Wang and Yan2020), with potential system-destabilizing effects. As these exemplary cases make clear, tycoons fall when they back the wrong faction or when they are too outspoken.

The pressing question we need to address here is whether the tycoons who remain free will continue to tolerate the CCP’s noncooperative behavior. The short-term response of tycoons who are not imprisoned has been to engage in philanthropy and to endorse the party’s priorities, like poverty alleviation. For example, Jack Ma became devoted to such good works in 2021 (Ding Reference Ding2021), after the scuttled Ant IPO, thus providing a parallel to the Russian oligarchs in the 2000s who were able to survive Putin’s ascent to power (Frye Reference Frye2006). However, as comparative research establishes, oligarchs are keen to defend their wealth when their fortunes are threatened (Winters Reference Winters2011; Markus Reference 83Markus2015), and philanthropy may not be the most effective strategy for protecting property and personal security. How much longer will tycoons like Jack Ma continue to do good works and contribute to charity? Will the superrich organize to challenge the state? Might they try to convert their economic prowess into political power?

Two possible answers can be provided to this question. One is suggested by arguments about the existence of a mafia-state in contemporary China, where business and government hold each other in check through an equilibrium described as “mutual endangerment” (Rithmire and Chen Reference Rithmire and Chen2021; Rithmire Reference Rithmire2023). Similarly, scholars stress the “mutual dependence and vulnerability” that exists between firms and the CCP (Pearson, Rithmire, and Tsai Reference Margaret, Rithmire and Tsai2023, 39). These interpretations give significant agency to entrepreneurs. This may be true subnationally, but at the central level the capacity of even the richest tycoons to exercise control over government officials is questionable. To put this in perspective, we may think of other mafia-states, like those that existed in Russia and some Eastern European countries like Bulgaria in the 1990s (Klebnikov Reference Klebnikov2000; Ganev Reference Ganev2007). In those cases, business literally captured the state and either ensconced itself in the Kremlin (during Yeltsin’s second term as president, 1996–99) or installed a government that ruled on its behalf (in the mid-1990s in Bulgaria). Importantly, China is far removed from this type of situation. The state has the upper hand and has adeptly avoided capture (Zhang Reference Zhang2021). In contrast to the postcommunist regimes in the 1990s, in which central authority was weak, the CCP remains very strong. Its noncooperative relations with platform companies and its imprisonment of troublemaking tycoons are concrete manifestations of such strength. They send a clear signal that those who do not follow the party line will be punished. Thus, the options of the superrich are limited to complying with party diktat or risking both their wealth and their liberty.

2.6 Whither Economic Reform in China?

This section has reviewed China’s impressive record of economic reform, demonstrating that optimistic pronouncements about the end of history notwithstanding (Fukuyama Reference Fukuyama1989), there is no necessary link between marketization and democratization. The experience of China also shows that the Harvard Plan of shock therapy involving rapid privatization and marketization is not the only pathway out of central planning. By delaying reform of the SOEs, China was able to minimize the social costs of market transition that were poorly received by the citizenry in Eastern Europe. Finally, the case of China shows that privatization need not lead to the state’s wholesale loss of control over its assets. In contrast to Eastern Europe, the party-state in China was able to retain substantial leverage over the SOEs that were only partially privatized.

This section has also demonstrated that, in contrast to dominant theorizing in comparative politics, Chinese entrepreneurs are no democrats. Businesspeople benefited from being loyal supporters of the CCP in the 1980s, 1990s, and the 2000s. They were able to accumulate extraordinary levels of wealth while at the same time helping the party achieve the legitimacy-generating economic growth that it needed. No rational entrepreneur would risk disturbing this beneficial relationship by calling for political reform.

The Xi era has presented a new chapter in business–government relations, in which the CCP is much less cooperative toward companies that do not fully support its strategic vision for economic development and toward tycoons who either back the wrong elite faction or express overt criticism of the party. Combined with the now permanent anti-corruption campaign, such steps by the party have had a sobering effect on entrepreneurs. The long-term impact on China’s economic trajectory remains to be seen.

3.1 The Changing Nature of the Social Contract in Post-Mao China

In the lead-up to the 1989 Tiananmen events, efforts were made to reform the inefficient socialist social contract, which extended costly cradle-to-grave benefits to urban workers and their families (Dillon Reference Dillon2015). Worker discontent about high inflation and the legal sanctioning of enterprise bankruptcy and unemployment paused the implementation of welfare-reducing urban reforms. The central government continued to supply SOEs with sufficient funds to maintain and even expand their pre-1989 workforce, so the number of individuals employed by state-owned units (guoyou danwei) grew from 103 million in 1989 to 112 million in 1994 (Zhongguo tongji nianjian 2010, 118). Consumer price subsidies also increased substantially, from 31.7 billion yuan in 1988 to 71.2 billion yuan in 1998 (Xin Zhongguo 1999, 12). The dismantling of the socialist social contract for urban workers did not begin until after the 1997 Fifteenth Party Congress, when the policy of “grasping the large and letting go of the small” (zhuada fangxiao) authorized privatization of smaller SOEs and a drastic reduction in their workforce. This decade-long delay of reform was economically inefficient but politically expedient.

Learning from Eastern Europe, where enterprise restructuring resulted in a massive rise in unemployment, China implemented SOE reform gradually. Workers were initially classified as “laid off” (xiagang) rather than immediately becoming unemployed. For three years, these laid-off workers maintained a relationship with their work unit, drew a salary, received benefits, and engaged in retraining. It was only after the three-year period that those workers still seeking employment were reclassified as unemployed (Tang and Yang Reference Tang and Yang2008). Despite these efforts to cushion SOE employees, there was still significant discontent about the loss of benefits and entitlements (Hurst Reference Hurst2009). A policy that was meant to ease the transition to a post-socialist social contract was put in place whereby workers were allowed to purchase at below-market rates subsidized housing provided to them by their work units. The late 1990s also inaugurated the dibao (minimum-living guarantee), which in principle supplies means-tested financial assistance to those who are worst affected by the transition, though more instrumental stability-maintenance considerations also appear to have been at work (Pan Reference Pan2020; Solinger Reference Solinger2022).

In general, the 2000s and 2010s witnessed a systematic expansion of benefits. The New Rural Cooperative Medical System (xinxing nongcun hezuo yiliao zhidu) was introduced in 2002 as a way to reduce illness-related poverty among rural hukou (household registration) holders (Klotzbücher et al. Reference Klotzbücher, Lässig, Jiangmei and Weigelin-Schwiedrzik2010). The Labor Contract Law, passed in 2008, stipulates that all employees are entitled to a labor contract. To the extent that it was properly enforced, this law made it more difficult for employers to fire workers without cause, to maintain forced labor conditions, to delay the payment of wages, and to avoid making benefit contributions. The 2010 Social Security Law mandates that both employers and employees must make contributions to five different types of social insurance: pensions, medical insurance, work-related injury insurance, unemployment insurance, and maternity insurance. Although the law represents a step in the right direction, several serious problems remain: great inter- and intra-provincial variation in the extent of coverage of the various social insurance schemes (Huang Reference Ang2020); nontransferability of benefits and entitlements from one location to another; and incomplete implementation and coverage, especially for migrant workers in cities, for urban residents without fixed employment, and for residents of rural areas (Frazier Reference Frazier2010; Huang Reference Huang2015). Despite these shortcomings, the gradual expansion of welfare benefits that has taken place during the last two decades has been a point of pride for the CCP (Wang Jingqing Reference Jingqing2021, 90). For this reason, the 2023 drop in the number of citizens with health insurance due to rising costs was not welcome news for the party (Sun Reference Sun2023).

Historically, urban–rural inequality has been exacerbated by the existence of a two-track social benefits system, whereby urban residents receive substantially higher benefits than rural residents (Gao Reference Gao2010). The situation is especially problematic for those rural migrants who have worked in the cities for long periods of time but who still possess a rural hukou, which only entitles them to rural pensions that are inadequate for survival in the urban areas. Established in the 1950s as a form of social control (Wang Reference Wang2005), the hukou greatly reduced rural-to-urban mobility in the 1950–70s. Although migration to the cities became very common in the post-Mao period, those who held a rural hukou were excluded from the urban welfare state. In recent years, many localities have abolished restrictions on the acquisition of urban hukou. Some have allowed rural hukou holders to purchase property in urban areas, thus making them eligible to access state-managed urban schools, which generally provide higher-quality education than the private schools to which the children of migrants are typically relegated. However, currently available data do not allow us to ascertain how widespread these changes have been (for an important contribution, see Vortherms Reference 88Vortherms2024).

In sum, as China was moving from a socialist to a market social contract, the scope of the contract initially contracted but was eventually expanded, reaching levels that surpassed provision under Mao, especially with regard to rural residents who did not receive pensions under central planning. Though more generous than its counterpart under central planning, the post-Mao welfare state must further improve benefits. The reason is that public goods provision is a central pillar of regime legitimacy in China (Dickson Reference Dickson2016, 11) and citizens overwhelmingly feel that this is the responsibility of the government rather than of individuals (Dickson Reference Dickson2016, 189).

3.2 Sensitizing the Regime to Citizen Preferences Regarding the Social Contract

In competitive authoritarian regimes, elections can apprise the leadership about citizen preferences with regard to the social contract. China uses nonelectoral mechanisms to assess these preferences. One channel for studying public opinion is analysis of the content of citizen petitions (xinfang), which focus primarily on citizen dissatisfaction with fulfilment of the social contract. Xinfang have emerged as the main mechanism for the transmission of information in communist regimes. Protests are also informative, but this information is disseminated both vertically and horizontally (Lorentzen Reference Lorentzen2017), in contrast to petitions, which are private requests for services that are transmitted only vertically. Since the 1990s, the Internet has provided an additional avenue for citizens to communicate their views – posting on websites and social media under their real names (Distelhorst and Hou Reference Distelhortst and Hou2017). Like protests, Internet posts allow for a public airing of grievances, thus calling for a different response from that issued in reaction to citizen complaints. From the point of view of regime insiders, complaints provide the most effective mechanism for learning about citizen grievances because the information is transmitted only vertically, rather than both vertically and horizontally as in the case of protests and Internet posts (Dimitrov Reference Dimitrov2023).

Petition reports, which have existed since the Mao period (Shanghai Municipal Archives Reference Municipal Archives1965), supply leaders with statistical data on the number of petitions, the breakdown of petitions into different categories (labor protection, welfare concerns, legal matters), and the social characteristics of the petitioners. These reports are prepared with different frequencies, at the level of the county,Footnote ² the province (Tianjin 1997, 311), and nationally (Zhonggong Zhongyang Guojia Jiguan 2008, 1083). In addition to petition reporting, leaders can assess public opinion on the social contract through other avenues as well, such as opinion polling (Gaige Neican 2014a) and reports on protests, which are variously referred to as mass incidents (quntixing shijian) (Gaige Neican 2014b) or sudden incidents (tufa shijian) (Gaige Neican 2012). Although some have argued that negative news is suppressed in certain types of reporting (Pan and Chen Reference Pan and Chen2018), the leadership is aware of the potential of withholding information and it actively works to mitigate such problems by fostering redundancy, thus allowing for a cross-checking of intelligence received through different reporting streams (Dimitrov Reference Dimitrov2023; Gao Reference Gao2016). In short, Chinese leaders have access to multiple channels to assess citizen perceptions about the fulfilment of the social contract. The problem, as we will discuss in the remainder of this section, is that citizens today are complaining less and are increasingly likely to engage in protests.

3.2.1 Complaints to the Authorities 1989–2004

In the wake of the Tiananmen Square protests, as the top Chinese leaders were dealing with crises that threatened the very core of China’s political model, they also found time to think about citizen complaints, the number of which had declined in the years leading up to 1989, despite the clear and objective deterioration in the economic well-being of urban workers. Comments were made in the summer of 1989 about providing prompt and detailed responses to citizen complaints by top leaders, such as Shanghai mayor Zhu Rongji, General Secretary Jiang Zemin, Politburo Standing Committee member Qiao Shi, and Premier Li Peng (Renmin Xinfang 1989a; 1989c). A further indicator of the importance of petitions was a meeting of ten directors of provincial-level letters-and-visits bureaus convened by the top leadership in August 1989 (Renmin Xinfang 1989b) and a September 1989 notice to all provincial-level party and government offices by the Central Bureau of Letters and Visits regarding strengthening complaints work (Renmin Xinfang 1990). The focus on the system of citizen petitions is not surprising, considering that it provides an essential channel to regain the trust of the masses through increased responsiveness to popular grievances.

The effect of this attention by the top echelon of the party-state was an increase in the number of letters and visits, thus reintegrating citizens into the system (see Figure 1). In the 1990s petitions came primarily from rural residents who were expressing dissatisfaction with the excessive taxation, high compulsory procurement quotas, cadre malfeasance, and corrupt implementation of village elections. By the early 2000s, most petitions were initiated by unemployed urban workers, who sought to express dissatisfaction with enterprise restructuring and were demanding social welfare payments and poverty relief. The number of complaints increased very rapidly, and by 2004 it stood at 13.7 million, more than double the 5.5 million petitions received in 1990 (see Figure 1).

Figure 1 Complaints to the authorities, 1990–2020.

Source: Author’s dataset, constructed from provincial yearbooks and materials for internal circulation.

3.2.2 Decline in Complaints Received by the Letters-and-Visits Bureaus since 2005

The number of petitions handled by the xinfang offices declined after 2004 (see Figure 1). The frequency of complaints has been low not only in absolute terms but also in relative terms: at 4 per 1,000 people, the rate of complaints in 2019 was nearly an order of magnitude smaller than the lowest volume of complaints in communist Bulgaria, which stood at 36.67 per 1,000 people at its nadir in 1987 (Dimitrov Reference Dimitrov2023). What is especially worrisome about the decline registered in Figure1 is that it has occurred in conjunction with a dramatic increase in the frequency of mass incidents, mostly at the subnational level (see Figure 2). Participation in mass incidents indicates that citizens do not believe that their grievances can be resolved through the formal complaint channels that are available at the local levels. Despite attempts to incentivize citizens to stop protesting and to utilize the letters-and-visits system (Zhonggong Zhongyang Bangongting Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2014), socioeconomic contention has persisted. When Xi Jinping assumed power, there was a new urgency to handle protests in a manner that would maintain social stability, a paramount concern since the 1989 Tiananmen protests.

Figure 2 Mass incidents, 1993–2013.

Source: Author’s dataset, based on Wedeman Reference Wedeman2009, Sun Reference Liping2011, Zhang and Chen Reference Mingjun and Ming2014, and on materials for internal circulation.

3.3 Declining Responsiveness to Citizen Grievances

How responsive has the leadership been to citizen preferences? Here we need to draw a distinction between macro-level responsiveness by top leaders and micro-level grassroots responsiveness. Data on leadership response are difficult to come by, but they can be found in internal government publications. An annual report of the National Administration for Letters and Visits reveals, for example, that Politburo Standing Committee members issued instructions on 90 percent of the reports on trends in the letters and phone calls (xindian qingkuang) that they received throughout 2007 (Zhonggong Zhongyang Guojia Jiguan Reference Zhongyang, Gongzuo and Yanjiushi2008, 1083). We also have specific evidence that Jiang Zemin (Renmin Xinfang 2000a), Zhu Rongji (Renmin Xinfang 2000b), and Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao (Zhonggong Zhongyang Guojia Jiguan Reference Zhongyang, Gongzuo and Yanjiushi2008, 1084) have all issued instructions on citizen complaints. This surprisingly high level of responsiveness bespeaks the value that leaders attach to the monitoring of petitions. Major legislative change, such as abolition of the agricultural tax in 2006, promulgation of the Labor Contract Law in 2008, and expansion of the social safety net in the 2000s and 2010s, can be directly traced to citizen grievances expressed either through complaints or protests. Internal government publications emphasize that responsiveness is essential to safeguard trust in communist party cadres (Lingdao Canyue 2014), to maintain social stability (Lin and Liu Reference Weiye and Hanmin2008, 3; Lingdao Canyue 2013), and to prevent collective protests (Ningxia Reference Difangzhi Bianshen Weiyuanhui2019, 193; Sichuan Reference Sheng Zhengfu2019, 80; Hainan Reference Sheng Renmin Zhengfu2020, 121–123).

The biggest challenge for the center has been the low micro-level responsiveness of local governments to citizen grievances, as indicated by the increasing number of mass incidents (protests). Further discussion of this trend will be provided in Section 3.3.1.

3.4 Online Petitioning

The preceding paragraphs have presented evidence of a diminishing responsiveness to both complaints and protests. We might think that the decline in the number of petitions is compensated for by the increased use of online complaints. We should of course stress that the petitioning statistics presented in Figure 1 include complaints submitted by letter, in person, as well as online. The data, compiled by the author by consulting Chinese provincial yearbooks, clearly point out that since 2017 online complaints have become dominant. Nonetheless, the aggregate number of complaints is declining. But what about the various hotlines that have been introduced to allow citizens to contact the government directly? Since 2018 provinces have created so-called “12345” portals, with the goal of allowing citizens to register all problems by visiting a single website (yiwang tongban) or by making a single phone call to the 12345 number (Qinghai Reference Sheng Difangzhi Bianzuan Weiyuanhui2019, 110). Could it be that individuals are using these portals instead of the formal complaints system? Here we must distinguish between the functions of the portals and the functions of the complaint system. The portals are the latest incarnation of government hotlines, which were transformed into “ask the mayor” websites in the 2000s (Distelhorst and Hou Reference Distelhortst and Hou2017). Both the old hotlines and the new portals are overwhelmingly focused on providing factual information about government services. Occasionally, citizens may contact government offices simply to vent or to chat (Ding Reference Ding2020; Reference Ding2022). By contrast, complaints are grievances stemming from some type of violation of the law, such as illegal land taking, forcible destruction of housing, or nonpayment of wages or welfare benefits. Although often conflated in the English-language literature on Chinese politics, requests for information are different from complaints. This explains why the number of complaints has declined, even as requests for information have increased. That being said, we should take seriously the ambition of the party to eventually make the 12345 portals into digital equivalents of letters and visits offices. Future research may be able to demonstrate whether over time the 12345 portals are beginning to handle more matters resembling the grievances received by the xinfang offices.

How effective are these portals in contacting the authorities, when compared with the complaints system? Data from Hunan province allow us to answer this question. Its “Internet and supervision WeChat platform” (“hulianwang+jiancha” pingtai) received 1.2 billion WeChat text messages in 2019 denouncing corruption, with some especially zealous users submitting over 95,000 messages (Hunan Reference Huang2020, 135–136). However, most of this information was simply noise. For instance, the 1.2 billion messages led to the disciplining of only 619 individuals and the transfer of only five individuals to the judicial authorities (Hunan Reference Huang2020, 135–136). Contrast this with the corruption denunciations received through the standard CCP Discipline Inspection channels: in Hunan, there were 72,224 such corruption denunciations in 2019, which resulted in the disciplining of 19,603 party members (Hunan Reference Huang2020, 136). This is twenty-five times more than the number of individuals disciplined as a result of corruption denunciations submitted via the WeChat platform. In sum, though numerous, WeChat platform messages are much less effective than complaints submitted in person or online through the regular corruption denunciation and petitioning mechanisms operated by the communist party and the government.

3.5 Conclusion: Declining Responsiveness to Welfare Demands

The market social contract contains certain pitfalls for the regime. Under the socialist social contract in Eastern Europe, citizens expected a steady increase in the standard of living as a result of economic growth and extensive price subsidies. In addition, they received a comprehensive package of welfare benefits (lifetime employment, subsidized housing, free healthcare and education, and universal pensions at age fifty-five for women and age sixty for men); importantly, inequality was low. In China under Mao, the socialist social contract extended only to a subset of the urban population. The market social contract currently in place involves elevated levels of economic growth, universal pensions (at age fifty or age fifty-five for women and age sixty for men, to be gradually extended to fifty-five or fifty-eight for women and sixty-three for men by the end of 2039), health insurance, and access to free education through junior high school. Apart from the extreme inequalities in wealth and the vast regional and sectoral disparities in welfare provision, discontent is high because of difficulties enforcing labor regulations, insecurity of urban property rights (especially over housing), and displacement of rural residents from their homes due to lucrative land redevelopment schemes supported by local governments. Trust in the party in the 2010s was declining and it presumably decreased even further during the initial cover-up of COVID-19 and during the 2022 lockdowns. It is unclear how much longer the party-state will be able to direct welfare discontent away from Beijing to the local governments. Should dissatisfaction turn against the central government, systemwide instability is likely to follow. Therefore, it is imperative for the party-state to ensure that there is high responsiveness to popular grievances.

4.1 The War of Ideas

Ideology formed a fundamental part of the rivalry between democracy and autocracy both during and after the Cold War. As early as 1950, the US National Security Council (NSC) prepared a brief for President Truman that outlined the “basic conflict between the idea of freedom … and the idea of slavery” (NSC 68, 7). Although the classified memo presents several options for dealing with the communist threat, it concludes that the most effective course of action involves overt political and psychological warfare aimed at encouraging anti-government unrest (NSC 68, 57). Thus began the fight for hearts and minds, which was waged on the cultural front. This means that Western cultural products, such as literature, film, music, fashion, and radio and TV programs, came to serve as carriers of the ideas of freedom. It is no coincidence that Francis Fukuyama encapsulates his wildly optimistic views about the triumph of the Western idea as “the ultimate victory of the VCR” (Fukuyama Reference Fukuyama1992, 108), or “liberal democracy in the political sphere combined with easy access to VCRs and stereos in the economic” (Fukuyama Reference Fukuyama1989, 8).

To understand why, with the benefit of hindsight, Fukuyama’s end of history appears to have been a myth, we need to analyze the defensive and offensive countermeasures deployed by all communist autocracies to blunt the force of Western ideology. Contrasting China with Eastern Europe provides further insights into why the triumph of democracy and the end of history ultimately proved partial at best.

4.2 Hard Defense: Protecting Cultural Security

Since the 1950s, cultural protection has provided a broad umbrella for deploying defensive tactics against ideological infiltration. After defining the concept and describing its evolution over time, we move to a discussion of the functions of the two main entities tasked with safeguarding cultural security – the MPS and the MSS. We conclude by elaborating on the specific techniques deployed by the two ministries against the main threats to cultural security.

4.3 Soft Counteroffensive Measures

Along with the hard defensive policies outlined thus far, softer strategies like patriotic education, traditional learning (guoxue), resisting linguistic hegemony, and promoting indigenous cultural production have been deployed as techniques to counteract Western ideological infiltration by building cultural confidence (wenhua zixin) and national pride.Footnote ⁴ In contrast to the defensive measures, which are the prerogative of the MPS and MSS, the counteroffensive strategies are deployed by the powerful CCP Propaganda Department, which oversees all bureaucracies in charge of culture, print and publications, and education. The Propaganda Department decides on crucial doctrinal matters like the ideological content of cultural products that are allowed to circulate through analog and digital means. It also sanctions the production of ideological entertainment like the 2023 Hunan TV five-part series When Marx Met Confucius, which aims to popularize a key element in Xi Jinping’s Thoughts on Culture, namely the possibility of combining Marxism with Confucianism.Footnote ⁵

4.4 Fears of a Color Revolution under COVID-19: Hostile Foreign Forces in the 2020s

New challenges continue to be seen through the familiar lens of hostile foreign forces meddling in Chinese domestic affairs and fomenting a color revolution. The term “color revolutions” is typically used to describe the demise of autocracies in the 1990s and the 2000s, primarily in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Those electoral revolutions involved dislodging postcommunist leaders through the ballot box (Bunce and Wolchik Reference Bunce and Wolchik2011). Despite the absence of electoral politics in China, the leadership is worried about contagion because the color revolutions also involved extensive anti-regime mobilization (Koesel and Bunce Reference Koesel and Bunce2013). Such fears were exacerbated in the 2000s, with China experiencing hundreds of thousands of protests per year that were regarded as threats to social and political stability, as noted in Section 3. The popular mobilization that characterized Arab Spring (even if the electoral dimension was largely absent) led to similar concerns about contagion of anti-regime contention. Hong Kong, which has the status of a Special Administrative Region (SAR), was also rocked by ongoing anti-government protests throughout the 2010s. Finally, the anti-war protests that erupted throughout Russia in the spring of 2022, following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, were similarly viewed by the Chinese authorities as the beginning of an incipient color revolution, whose spillover potential to China must be blocked (Introvigne Reference Introvigne2022). The common denominator in Chinese thinking about the color revolutions, Arab Spring, the Hong Kong protests, and the anti-war movement in Russia is that they all were instigated by hostile foreign forces – and that China must remain vigilant about the influence of such external factors.

Concern about hostile foreign forces persisted throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. After nearly three years of periodic lockdowns and numerous other restrictions guided by the goal of minimizing COVID-19 infections, protests emerged in dozens of Chinese cities in November 2022. As the participants were not allowed to raise banners with slogans or comments, they held up sheets of A4 paper that were simply blank (these events are now -commonly referred to as the White Paper Protests or the A4 Revolution). Although the zero-COVID policies were ultimately repealed, the highest-profile protest organizers were detained. These contentious episodes were portrayed as being instigated by hostile foreign forces (jingwai fanhua shili) by wolf-warrior diplomat Lu Shaye, China’s ambassador to France (Deutsche Welle Reference Welle2022; see also Martin Reference Martin2021 on wolf-warrior diplomacy). Ambassador Lu has argued that “white is also a color” and that hostile foreign forces were seeking to bring about a color revolution in China. General Secretary Xi Jinping similarly has highlighted the danger of a color revolution spreading to China. These concerns are reflected in a security threat assessment produced by the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission in March 2022 (Introvigne Reference Introvigne2022). Unsurprisingly, fears of the presumed nexus between hostile foreign forces and public protests that may be transformed into color revolutions persisted during the pandemic.

4.5 The Hard Turn in Cultural Security under Xi

This section analyzes the hard defensive and the soft counteroffensive measures deployed by the CCP in response to the perceived ideological assault on cultural security by hostile foreign forces. In the 2010s, an overall repressive turn was detected in Chinese politics (Wang and Minzner Reference Wang and Minzner2015; Gallagher Reference Gallagher2017). This also had implications for cultural security. As reaffirmed by Xi Jinping in his July 1, 2021, centenary speech, the party is committed to resisting Western influence. Audiences were reminded that China had withstood “subversion, sabotage, and armed provocation” and it would not allow foreign forces to “bully, oppress, and subjugate” it.Footnote ⁶ Xi is firmly committed to avoiding the fate of the Soviet Union.

The hard turn allows us to make sense of a number of measures, like the crackdown on labor and other rights-based NGOs; the ban on social media publishing any news reports that are not sourced from the official media (thus effectively outlawing citizen journalism); and the general escalation of Internet restrictions after Xi assumed power in 2012–13. These measures are consistent with the blocking of the potential vectors for ideological infiltration and subversion. But what about limiting the amount of time children spend playing computer games; banning foreign educational business; and declaring androgynous stars such as Zhu Zhengting and Liu Yu off-limits on Chinese TV? Or what about Article 34 of the 2023 draft revisions of the Public Security Administration Punishments Law, which allows the police to impose fines or to detain those who negate the deeds of national heroes and martyrs, engage in speech detrimental to the spirit of the Chinese people, or wear clothing that hurts the feelings of the Chinese people? Though they may appear irrational, these restrictions are fully consistent with the goal of protecting cultural security. Their long-term viability will be revisited in the Conclusion to this Element.

5.1 Institutions for Rival Incorporation

The general theoretical literature on autocracies investigates the deployment of power-sharing mechanisms, such as cabinet appointments or the granting of legislative seats, as strategies for preventing potential rivals from mounting a challenge to the regime (Arriola, DeVaro, and Meng Reference Arriola, DeVaro and Meng2021; Gandhi Reference Gandhi2008). The idea that elite opponents can be co-opted in such ways rings true. Yet because cabinets are small and positions in the legislature are limited, such mechanisms can only be used to neutralize a relatively narrow circle of potential elite challengers. By contrast, political parties and state-sponsored mass organizations provide a more capacious tool for wide-ranging rival incorporation (Magaloni Reference Magaloni2006; Brownlee Reference Brownlee2007; Geddes, Wright, and Frantz Reference Geddes, Wright and Frantz2018, 131–136). In particular, parties can attract and retain ambitious individuals through the hierarchical assignment of services and benefits (Svolik Reference Svolik2012, 162–195). Large nationwide social organizations can play a similar role (Fulbrook Reference Fulbrook2005, 235–249). However, the latter control fewer resources, which correspondingly limits their capacity to incorporate potential rivals. Therefore, political parties emerge as the key mechanism for co-opting substantial segments of the population in autocracies.

5.2 Expanding the Size of the Party

In August 1989, as widespread disaffection with the CCP was palpable, General Secretary Jiang Zemin paid a visit to the Organization Department to stress the importance of party building (Zhonggong Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2021b, 322). Consequently, although the population has increased by only 30 percent since 1989, the CCP has doubled in size during that same period. This reveals the zeal with which the Organization Department has approached the task of vertical and horizontal party expansion in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square protests. Although its existence may sometimes not be apparent to casual observers, the CCP is omnipresent. Its universal reach allows for the identification of potential troublemakers and their incorporation into the ranks, where they can be controlled more effectively than if they were to remain outside the party.

5.2.1 General Trends in Party Building, 1989–2023

The Organization Department of the CCP is often considered to be one of the nerve centers of the party (Shambaugh Reference Shambaugh2008; McGregor Reference McGregor2010). This reflects the outsized importance of the department in party building, broadly construed ‒ a paramount task that involves not only creating new party cells but also expanding the size of the CCP and staffing government bureaucracies with party cadres through the nomenklatura system. When evaluating the post-Tiananmen record of the Organization Department, we should note three trends that are indicative of strength: a growing membership roster; a higher number of party structures; and increased levels of education among CCP members. At the same time, these achievements in party building are counterbalanced by the movement of the party away from a mass-based to an elite-oriented organization; the rapid aging of its membership; and the significant drop in applications to join the CCP. Signs of dynamism and indicia of potential ossification are present simultaneously, thus creating uncertainty about the party’s continued success in rival incorporation.

To begin, the party has registered remarkable increases in its membership. Between 1989 and the end of 2023, the CCP doubled in size from 49.5 million to 99.2 million members (see Figure 3). Most noteworthy about this development is that it took place against the background of the collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and Mongolia. The CCP studied this demise extensively at the time it occurred and today it continues to remind party cadres of the lessons that should be drawn from it, key among which is the imperative of maintaining organizational strength (Xiang Reference Zuotao2018). In contrast to Eastern Europe, the party in China not only survived but thrived. Based on its size, the CCP today appears to be stronger than ever.

Figure 3 Chinese Communist Party membership, 1989–2023 (millions).

Sources: Zhonggong Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2011, 9–10; Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2013–24.

Further evidence of vitality is provided by statistics on the development of party structures throughout the country. In China, there are three types of party organizations. According to the Party Constitution, when at least three party members are present, a party branch (zhibu) can be formed. Party branches can have a maximum of fifty members. In situations where more than 50 but fewer than 100 members exist, a general branch (zong zhibu) can be created. Party committees (dangwei) are established in units that have at least 100 members. Table 2 presents evidence of the success in setting up party organizations, whose number grew by two-thirds between 1989 and the end of 2023.

Table 2 Party organizational development (selected years)

	1989	2000	2013	2023
Party branches	2,803,398	3,161,338	3,835,000	4,554,000
Party general branches	130,928	187,331	265,000	325,000
Party committees	135,545	169,053	203,000	298,000
Total	3,069,871	3,517,722	4,304,000	5,176,000

Sources: Zhonggong Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2002, 176; Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2014 (rounding errors reproduced as found in source); Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2024.

The educational level of CCP members is also increasing. As Table 3 reveals, communist party members were overwhelmingly illiterate in 1949. Yet, illiteracy in the CCP had been nearly wiped out by 2000. As the share of illiterate party members has declined, the number of those with an associate degree (dazhuan) or a higher degree increased. In the three decades following 1989, the proportion of CCP members with advanced degrees quintupled. By 2023, more than one-half of party members had advanced degrees. The trend is unmistakable: the CCP in the twenty-first century is a party of educated individuals rather than of illiterates. In contrast, only 15.47 percent of the population overall had an associate degree or higher, according to the 2020 Census (www.stats.gov.cn).

Table 3 Educational attainment of party members

	1949	1989	2000	2023
Illiterate	69%	7.3%	2.5%
Associate’s degree or higher	0.3%	9.7%	21.1%	56.2%

Sources: Zhonggong Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2002, 50–53; Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2024.

The improved quality of party members is linked to another phenomenon, with less clear implications for the future of the CCP. Simply put, this is no longer a party of workers and peasants. Table 4 illustrates the change over time. In 1949, the two groups made up over 60 percent of the party membership. By 1989, they accounted for one-half. And in 2023, they constituted a mere one-third. A party that is composed of professionals, managers, businesspeople, and government bureaucrats is in danger of becoming elite-oriented rather than mass-oriented. Time will tell how serious those fissures are and how they might impact the capacity of the party to present itself as defending the interests of the masses.

Table 4 Share of workers and peasants in the party

	1949	1989	2000	2023
Workers	2.5%	13%	11.4%	6.7%
Peasants	59.6%	37.5%	32.4%	26.3%

Sources: Zhonggong Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2002, 98–105; Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2024.

Another trend that calls into question the vitality of the party is the aging of its members. We can illustrate the problem by contrasting the share of party members aged thirty-five or younger and those aged sixty-one or older. Table 5 allows us to trace how these proportions have evolved since 1989. It is beyond any doubt that the party has become older in a way that is even more extreme than the general aging of Chinese society (as revealed by the last population census conducted in 2020). When we interpret the statistics, we should also consider that, as of 2024, the standard retirement age in China remains age fifty-five for women and age sixty for men (though it will be gradually raised to fifty-eight for women and sixty-three for men by the end of 2039). Although individuals of any age are potential challengers to the regime, those who are younger tend to be more likely to cause trouble. Thus, a party whose base is increasingly skewed toward retirees is less capable of rival incorporation.

Table 5 Young and elderly individuals in the CCP (1989 and 2021) vs. in the general population over 18 years of age

	1989 CCP members	2021 CCP members	General population over 18
35 or younger	23.9%	25%	27.9%
61 or older	11.5%	28.1%	24%

Sources: Zhonggong Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2002, 24–25; Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2022; www.stats.gov.cn.

A final source of concern is the declining number of applicants to join the CCP. We should note that becoming a party member is not automatic. Rather, it involves a formal application and a complex vetting process, which culminates into the status of a candidate member (yubei dangyuan). According to Article 7 of the Party Constitution, candidate members are formally allowed to join the party (rudang) as full members only after a one-year probationary period. As Figure 4 illustrates, the decline became noticeable in 2016, when the number of applicants dropped by 8.5 percent as compared to 2015. In 2017–19, there was a further erosion of interest in party membership. The Organization Department remains silent about the cause of this issue. One interpretation is that the population of young adults (who form the largest share of the pool of potential party members) is shrinking. While it is undeniable that there has been a steady decline in the number of young individuals, this factor cannot account for the timing of such a sharp drop. A more likely explanation is a rational reaction to the reduced quota for new members that was implemented in 2015. It is clear that even if the party wants to slow down its growth, this should not occur at the cost of declining interest in joining, as revealed by the drop in applications. In this light, the uptick in applications in 2021–23 is perhaps a source of hope for the CCP, though it remains to be seen whether it is a temporary effect of the 2021 centenary celebrations, when the quota for new party members was relaxed (it was restricted again in 2022‒23). We will revisit the implications of some of these trends for the future of the party in the conclusion to this section of the Element.

Figure 4 Applications for party membership, 2009–2023 (millions).

Sources: Zhonggong Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2014–24; Cui and Chen Reference Jianmin and Dongping2016, 37.

5.2.3 The Party in NGOs

The conventional understanding is that NGOs should be independent of the party-state and should facilitate democratization (Bernhard Reference Bernhard1993; Ekiert Reference Ekiert1996). Western political science has paid substantial attention to civil-society groups under authoritarianism in light of their demonstrated capacity to catalyze opposition to the regime and to drive political change (Kubik Reference Kubik1994; Jancar-Webster Reference Jancar-Webster1998; Nepstad Reference Nepstad2011). Although NGOs in China had a golden age when interference in their work was sporadic and therefore minimal in some cases, that period came to an end in the 1990s (Saich Reference 86Saich2000). NGOs are now allowed to operate only if they supply social services (such as education, healthcare, elder care, or poverty alleviation) in cases where state provision is insufficient to meet demand, if they remain local rather than seeking to establish a nationwide network, and if they refrain from voicing calls for democracy (Spires Reference Spires2011; Hsu Reference Hsu2017). Since the 2000s and especially in the 2010s, requirements for registration with the state authorities have been stringently enforced. In general, successful NGOs must display a cooperative attitude toward the state (Teets Reference Teets2014).

The autonomy of civil organizations has been constrained not only by tighter state regulatory control but also by the requirement that they establish party organizations, as mandated by the CCP Organization Department (Hu, Zeng, and Wu Reference Jieren, Zeng and Tong2022; Wang and Wang Reference Wang and Wang2023). Although these rules have been in place since 1998, they were not rigorously enforced until after the Eighteenth Party Congress in 2012 (Zhou Reference 92Zhou2018; Xin and Huang Reference Xin and Huang2022). Since then, party branches, general branches, and party committees have been established at civil-society organizations (shehui zuzhi), a term that includes civic associations, NGOs, and private foundations. Figure 5 illustrates the growth of party structures at civil-society organizations during the 2012–23 period. One feature of party building that is revealed in Figure 5 but has not been discussed by the CCP Organization Department, is that the number of party structures declined after 2017. It is especially noteworthy that this reduction occurred as the number of NGOs increased from 761,539 in 2017 to 891,267 in 2022 (Zhongguo tongji nianjian Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2023, 728). What might be driving this? The closure of foreign NGOs is unlikely to account for the general decline in party structures, as such NGOs make up well under 1 percent of all registered social organizations in China (China NGO Project 2022; Zhongguo tongji nianjian Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2023, 728). A more plausible explanation is that the Organization Department was reacting to the fivefold increase in party structures in NGOs between 2012 and 2015 with alarm and therefore decided to merge some inefficient independent party branches (duli zhibu) into joint party branches (lianhe zhibu) that share a supervisory unit (e.g., the Federation of Industry and Commerce), belong to the same type of industry (e.g., a league of Internet firms), or are territorially concentrated (e.g., in streets, industrial parks, or buildings).Footnote ⁸ This policy was promulgated at the end of 2015, but implementation took some time, thus not leading to a perceptible drop in party structures in NGOs until after 2017.

Figure 5 Party structures in civil-society organizations, 2012–2023.

Source: Zhonggong Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2013–24.

What does this mean for the panoptical capacity of the party? In 2017, the Organization Department reported that 61.7 percent of civil-society organizations had established a party organization (Zhonggong Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2018). Alternative calculations based on officially released numbers reveal that only 39.8 percent of NGOs had a party branch in 2017 (Xin and Huang Reference Xin and Huang2022, 429). Using Xin and Huang’s methodology (Reference Xin and Huang2022), we can extend their analysis beyond Reference Hsu2017 to discover that the share of NGOs with party committees declined to as low as 16 percent in 2019 before rebounding to 20 percent in 2022 (Zhonggong Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2018–23; Zhongguo tongji nianjian Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2023, 728). The communist leadership understands the potential of social organizations to challenge the system. For this reason, the CCP seeks to keep NGOs under strict control and surveillance. The implications of the drop in the number of NGOs with party cells revealed in Figure 5 deserve future attention.

5.2.4 The Party in Private Firms

Although various regulations mandating the creation of party committees in joint ventures and private enterprises of a certain size were promulgated by the CCP Organization Department in the 1980s and 1990s, enforcement was inconsistent to the end of the 1990s (Holbig Reference Holbig, Brødsgaard and Yongnian2004; Chen Reference Chen2008). This changed in 2000–01 with the doctrinal adjustment articulated in Jiang Zemin’s theory of the Three Represents, which allowed the entry of capitalists into the CCP (Shambaugh Reference Shambaugh2008). Through a policy of concurrent appointment (jiaocha renzhi), private entrepreneurs may also serve as the party secretaries at their enterprises. By 2010, 70 percent of the capitalists who were also CCP members were assuming the functions of party secretaries at their respective firms (Yan and Huang Reference Yan and Huang2017, 52). Beginning in 2012, the Organization Department started to devote considerable attention to extend the party’s presence at both domestic and foreign private firms, singling out Internet companies for special attention (Xue Reference Xiaorong2018). The party’s determination to penetrate private business is palpable (Koss Reference Koss2021).

One issue that has not yet received sufficient attention is the precise extent to which the CCP has infiltrated private business. In part, this is due to changes in the way that data are reported. From 1998 to 2010, internal party statistical compendia tracked the number of party members at nonstate enterprises, which included private enterprises; Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan-invested enterprises; and foreign-invested enterprises. According to this standard, 3,526,676 CCP members worked in the above three types of nonstate enterprises as of 2010 (Zhonggong Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2011, 198). This is equivalent to 4.4 percent of CCP members at the time.

After 2010, the unit of accounting was changed from the individual to the firm, using the preexisting three-way breakdown of nonstate firms. Figure 6 illustrates the record of party building at private firms during the past decade. By 2015, as many as 1,602,000 firms (constituting 51.8 percent of the total that were required to do so according to CCP regulations) had established party organizations (dang zuzhi) (Zhonggong Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2016). After peaking in 2017 (when 1,877,000 firms or 73.1 percent of the total number of enterprises with the requisite number of party members had a CCP presence),Footnote ⁹ the number of firms with party organizations declined to 1,585,000 in 2018, representing a 15.5 percent drop from 2017 (Zhonggong Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2018–19). This decline, which continued in 2019, has not been noted in either the English-language or the Chinese scholarly literature. As the number of private firms was continuing to increase, the most likely cause was not the bankruptcies but rather the policies, promulgated in 2016, that required the merger of party branches according to supervisory unit, industry, or region. The impact of such policies began to be visible shortly thereafter.Footnote ¹⁰ The parallel with NGOs is not coincidental: NGOs and private firms are managed by the same “two-new” (liangxin) work committee of the Organization Department. This under-resourced work committee faces immense pressures to find entities willing to serve as supervisory units for party branches in NGOs and private firms (Wang Jingqing Reference Jingqing2021, 159–176). Loosely federated party branches have emerged as one response to the practical problem of insufficient resources within the Organization Department to manage independent party branches. Careful analysis of further data will be necessary to evaluate the implications of these developments for the capacity of the CCP to maintain a panoptical vision and tight control over private firms.

Figure 6 Party organizations in private firms, 2012–2023.

Source: Zhonggong Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2013–24.

5.3 Problems of Rival Incorporation

The achievements in party building detailed in Section 5.2 notwithstanding, the CCP is facing difficulties penetrating certain groups, with corresponding implications for successful rival incorporation. We will focus specifically on ethnic minorities; intellectuals who are critical of the system; and Hong Kong and Macau residents.

5.3.1 Penetration of Ethnic Minorities

The situation for ethnic minorities is complex (Leibold Reference Leibold2020; Roberts Reference Roberts2020). On the one hand, since 1989 the CCP has been recruiting minorities at a rapid pace. The available statistics, as presented in Figure 7, indicate that the overall share of minorities is increasing, reaching 7.7 percent in 2023, which is an all-time high and is comparable to the 8.9 percent share of minorities in the overall population.Footnote ¹¹

Figure 7 Percentage shares of ethnic minorities in the Chinese Communist Party, 1989–2023.

Sources: Zhonggong Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2011, 9–10; Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2013–24.

At the same time, a more nuanced picture emerges when we examine the situation with regard to representation of various different minorities. Table 6 demonstrates that CCP members from quiescent ethnic groups like the Koreans are overrepresented in the party (as is the Han Chinese majority), whereas restive minorities like the Uyghurs and the Tibetans are underrepresented. The only data point we have on this very sensitive issue is from 2006. This makes it difficult to assess whether the situation has changed, though the high level of discontent among these minority groups does not augur well for the capacity of the CCP to recruit from among them. Historically, minorities were underrepresented both in party school training courses and among CCP members in Xinjiang (Xinjiang Reference Weiwuer and Dangxiao1990, 189–190; Xinjiang Reference Weiwuer Zizhiqu Difangzhi Bianzuan Weiyuanhui2022, 3). The failure of co-optation in turn has implications for resorting to repression to manage minority threats.

Table 6 Percentage of ethnic groups in the general population and among party members (2006)

Ethnic group	Population %	CCP %
Han	91.6%	93.6%
Uyghur	0.7%	0.5%
Tibetan	0.5%	0.4%
Mongol	0.4%	0.5%
Korean	0.1%	0.2%

Sources: Zhonggong Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2011, 194; Chinese census data.

5.4 Auxiliary Mechanisms for Rival Incorporation

Within the PRC, there exist three additional mechanisms for rival incorporation: the All-China Women’s Federation; the All-China Federation of Trade Unions; and the United Front. The All-China Women’s Federation has a deep grassroots presence, with as many as 685,000 local organizations. It provides employment opportunities for 7.8 million executive members,Footnote ¹² thus helping with the incorporation of potentially disgruntled female citizens.

The main function of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions is to prevent the emergence of alternative trade unions. After all, regime insiders are fully aware of the role that the independent trade union Solidarity played in Poland’s democratization process. Prior to its being banned in 1981, Solidarity boasted ten million members in a country of thirty-six million. To maintain its clout, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions seeks to establish a deep grassroots presence and a large membership base: in 2017, there were 2,829,000 grassroots trade union organizations with 302 million members.Footnote ¹³ By 2020, there were 2,196,000 grassroots organizations with an undisclosed number of members (85 million members were recruited in the three years since 2017).Footnote ¹⁴ The long-term implications of the decline in the number of trade unions has not been analyzed in the literature. They deserve further study.

The United Front Work Department of the CCP has a long history that goes back to the pre-1949 collaboration with the Guomindang (KMT) (Van Slyke Reference Slyke and Lyman1967). The United Front persisted after the 1949 revolution and survives to the current day. It has a wide purview that includes managing the eight minor parties: the Jiusan Society; the China Democratic League; the China Zhigong Party; the Revolutionary KMT; the China National Democratic Construction Association; the China Association for Promoting Democracy; the Chinese Peasants and Workers Democratic Party; and the Taiwan Democratic Self-Government League. Officially known as “democratic,” these eight parties had a combined membership of 1.3 million in 2020, representing a tripling since 1996 (Groot Reference Groot2004, 185). These parties play a limited role in rival incorporation by controlling 372 of the 2,980 seats in the National People’s Congress (2018 data); some seats in the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference; and seats in the subnational legislatures. Scholars have found that the allocation of legislative positions is an effective strategy of incorporation, especially of entrepreneurs (Hou Reference Hou2019; Zhang Reference Zhang2021).

The United Front Work Department also controls the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce and the chambers of commerce, which work jointly under the “one organization, two nameplates” principle (Groot Reference Groot2004, 191). In 2018, there existed 3,416 industry and commerce federations and 48,916 chambers of commerce, with 2.6 million enterprise members.Footnote ¹⁵ The federations and chambers of commerce are used to create bridges to ambitious entrepreneurs and to ensure that they ultimately remain loyal to the CCP (Zhang Reference Zhang2021). They are also one of the entities in charge of party building in private firms (Wang Jingqing Reference Jingqing2021, 173). In short, both the United Front Work Department and the CCP-controlled All-China Women’s Federation and All-China Federation of Trade Unions are used as auxiliary institutions for rival incorporation.

5.5 Conclusion: Has the CCP Reached the Limit of Its Potential Growth?

This section has reviewed the strategies deployed by the CCP to incorporate potential rivals into the party. Signs of success abound: the party has grown and expanded into universities, private firms, and NGOs. No alternative political organization has arisen since the quashing of the Democracy Party of China in 1998. And unlike in Poland, where Solidarity challenged communist rule, no independent trade union movement has been allowed to emerge in China. Yet, there are reasons for concern. The CCP is becoming more elitist, older, and less popular, judging from the number of annual applications for membership. Its capacity to incorporate minorities, intellectuals who are critical of the system, and residents of Hong Kong and Macau is limited. Finally, Chinese opinion polling shows that levels of trust both in government and in party officials are declining (Lingdao Canyue 2014; Li, Chen, and Zhang Reference Peilin, Guangjin and Yi2015, 123). All this spells potential trouble in the future as the party aims to co-opt additional challengers. To stay in power, the CCP will need to continue to grow and to absorb those who might threaten its rule.

As we consider the future, one remaining question is whether the party has reached the natural limit of its expansion. Comparative data help shed some light on this issue. A large party is the most useful tool for policy implementation and for safeguarding ideological purity in a communist regime. Party building therefore is a central priority for the leadership. Yet the voluminous literature on comparative communism has not identified a basic empirical fact, namely, that regimes born from revolution develop smaller communist parties than regimes created through imposition. This surprising finding contradicts influential arguments that emphasize the organizational strength of revolutionary parties (Levitsky and Way Reference Levitsky and Way2022). The precise mechanism that can explain this result awaits future theorization, although plausible hypotheses must begin with the fact that communist political movements were illegal prior to the revolution, thus forcing them to survive as small underground organizations. By contrast, in nonrevolutionary regimes communist parties were legal, meaning that they had to compete against other parties in elections, which allowed them to engage in party building prior to the imposition of communist rule. The effects of regime type persist over time: party size in revolutionary regimes remains consistently smaller than in nonrevolutionary regimes (Dimitrov Reference Dimitrov, Lindstaedt and Van den Bosch2024).

A specific empirical illustration of these claims is useful. As Figure 8 shows, revolutionary regimes like China and Cuba had substantially smaller parties during their initial decade of rule than did a nonrevolutionary regime like Bulgaria. However, due to vigorous party building, in 2021 China and Cuba had communist parties that accounted for, respectively, 6.76 percent and 6.18 percent of the population. This is similar to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at the height of its development in 1988, when its membership accounted for 6.83 percent of the Soviet population. Yet, we should not allow those statistics to obscure the consequential fact of the decline in party size in Cuba, from 7.05 percent of the population in 2011 to 5.84 percent in 2016. Although it rebounded slightly to 6.18 percent in 2021, the Cuban Communist Party has surpassed its maximum size. In light of this finding and the 2014 decision to limit the annual quota of new CCP members, we might wonder whether we have witnessed a peak in the size of the CCP, which reached 7 percent in 2023. Given the negative implications for successful rival incorporation, this would represent a troubling prospect for the Organization Department and the top leadership. While there are no clear guidelines on what the optimal party size might be, a bigger party that manages to maintain high-quality members is, in general, more desirable than a smaller party, as the larger size allows for more expansive control. The worst outcome is when individuals renounce their party membership en masse, as occurred in Poland in the 1980s and elsewhere in the Eastern Bloc in the 1990s. This is not a fate the CCP would want to experience.

Figure 8 Party size in China, Cuba, and Bulgaria (as a percentage of the population).

Sources: Tsvetanski Reference Tsvetanski1988, 29; Zhonggong Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2011 and Reference Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu2013–22; Informe Central of the First through the Eighth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party (available at www.pcc.cu/es).

6.1 Adaptations and Their Limits in Post-1989 China

Without a doubt, 1989 ushered in a period of deep introspection for the CCP, which took the time to evaluate the reasons for the domestic upheaval and for the collapse of communist regimes around the world. The lessons learned guided the adaptations undertaken after 1989, with the explicit aim of shoring up the single-party model.

One conclusion that emerges is that 1989 was driven by socioeconomic uncertainty. This was well on display in Tiananmen Square, where the workers were protesting about inflation and job insecurity separately from the students who were demanding a more consultative type of leadership. The dilemma was how to restructure the inefficient SOEs without the attendant massive social costs. The solution has been to pursue economic reforms and to allow the private sector to grow, but to postpone the politically explosive SOE reforms for nearly a decade. In the late 1990s, Chinese SOEs underwent a process of controlled partial privatization, which allowed the CCP to mitigate the negative side effects, such as the loss of employment or welfare benefits. Concurrently, pensions, healthcare, and unemployment insurance were extended to increasingly wider segments of the population. Thus, the genesis of the first two adaptations (controlled SOE restructuring and welfare reforms) can be traced directly to 1989.

This is also true with regard to the third adaptation, which stemmed from ideological insecurities due to exposure to foreign ideas about democracy and human rights. The desire to limit the impact of external ideological influences led to a defensive approach of blocking those vectors that would allow foreign ideas to penetrate the country and to a counteroffensive strategy of building a domestic cultural industry and of displacing interest in Western cultural products by promoting indigenous cultural consumption. Though it existed prior to 1989, the concept of cultural security was reinvigorated by the Tiananmen events and by the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.

The final adaptation was also driven by the Tiananmen events. It became apparent to the CCP in 1989 that political pluralism must be avoided at all costs because once a multiparty system is permitted, collapse of the communist regime will inevitably follow. The response of the CCP has been to enhance its efforts to maintain both its depth and its breadth of penetration. The party doubled in size after 1989 and it managed to establish a presence in educational institutions, NGOs, and private firms, thus neutralizing groups like students, civil-society activists, and entrepreneurs who potentially could pose a challenge.

These four adaptations have allowed the CCP to extend its lifespan. Yet, each is now showing signs of decreasing effectiveness. Economic reform has stagnated. That the superrich are faced with property and personal insecurities is particularly worrying. Although it is currently unlikely that the superrich will mount an organized challenge against the CCP in an effort to defend their wealth (Markus Reference 83Markus2015), the offensive against private corporations will inevitably depress growth. This may be why attitudes toward oligarchs were relaxed somewhat in 2023. The second adaptation of welfare extension is also malfunctioning. The problem here is that because of the ineffectiveness of the petitioning system, citizens have been using protests to articulate their welfare grievances, which were often directed against rapacious local governments that were acting in concert with unscrupulous businesses that were unwilling to provide the welfare to which the citizenry was entitled. Even worse, cash-strapped local governments authorized lucrative redevelopment projects that involved land grabs and the illegal destruction of housing (both land and housing are considered fundamental welfare rights in China). Prior to the Xi administration, an equilibrium was maintained whereby the government showed a sufficient level of responsiveness to the demands of protesters. After Xi assumed power, a repressive turn led to prioritizing the dispersing of protesters rather than satisfying their demands (Cai and Chen Reference Cai and Jay Chen2022). Such a lack of responsiveness to citizen grievances has alarming implications for the future. Frustrations cannot be suppressed indefinitely.

Cultural security is also under strain. In September 2021, the Propaganda Department, through the National Radio and TV Administration, banned broadcasters from airing content featuring “sissy men and other abnormal esthetics” (Voice of America 2021). This was the final salvo of a heated debate in the Chinese media in 2019–21 about the cult following of androgynous male pop idols like Zhu Zhengting and Liu Yu and the national security implications of the esthetic phenomenon variously labeled “sissies” (niangpao) and somewhat affectionately “little fresh meat” (xiao xianrou). In October 2019, the official blog of the National Cultural Security and Ideological Construction Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences argued that the current popularity of androgynous stars in China, Korea, and Japan can be traced back to a 1980s CIA plot to promote effeminate entertainers in East Asia, in contrast to the virile masculinity projected by the US creative arts industry. The blogpost left no doubt that the alarming spread of niangpao presents a threat to Chinese cultural security. Leaving aside the offensive language used by propagandists to describe the pop stars, the practical implications of banning popular domestic content are alarming. Considering that the very rationale for promoting indigenous cultural production was that it would displace interest in Western culture and would thus ensure ideological security, banning Chinese pop idols appears to be a self-defeating strategy.

Finally, the CCP is changing in ways that may not be conducive to its continued role as a highly effective mechanism for rival incorporation. The party is becoming more elitist, older, and less popular. None of these trends bodes well for the future.

In light of the ossification of the existing adaptations, what might be the way forward? Taking into account that China has no interest in political pluralism or in initiating a process of democratization from strength (Slater and Wong Reference Ong2022), we might wonder whether there are other major adaptations that we have not discussed. In a volume published a decade ago (Dimitrov Reference Dimitrov2013), I highlight four adaptive responses that explain the resilience of the five surviving communist regimes (China, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea, and Cuba). In addition to deploying repression, these countries all undertook at least some of the following adaptations: of the economy; of ideology; of the mechanisms for inclusion; and of the systems for accountability. These were more general versions of the post-1989 China-specific adaptations discussed in this Element: economic reform; cultural (ideological) security; inclusion (rival incorporation), primarily through the CCP; and, as one element of accountability, responsiveness to welfare grievances as articulated through petitions and protests. The general point is that the adaptations undertaken after 1989 were very carefully considered and the four discussed in this Element helped to prolong the lifespan of the CCP. Now that they are all malfunctioning, the party has turned to repression.

6.2 The Limits of Repression as a Mechanism for Ensuring the Longevity of Single-Party Rule

There is no doubt that China is capable of wielding technologically assisted repression (Qian et al. Reference Qian, Xiao, Mozur and Cardia2022). When we think about digital authoritarianism, we need to distinguish smart-city projects (using cameras, 5G technology, and the Internet-of-Things to deliver more efficient municipal services) from safe-city projects, which rely on technologically enabled surveillance to track individuals who may engage in politically subversive behavior. Safe cities employ hardware, software, and human intelligence to deploy sophisticated urban grid policing (Huang and Tsai Reference Huang and Tsai2021; Chen and Greitens Reference Chen and Chestnut Greitens2022; Xu and He Reference Jianhua and Siying2022). Piloted in a handful of coastal cities in the early 2000s, the so-called “grid-management system” (wanggehua guanli) was implemented throughout the Tibet Autonomous Region under Chen Quanguo’s watch as party secretary in 2011–16 and it was later expanded to Xinjiang when Chen became party secretary there in 2016 (Leibold Reference Leibold2020). Today, urban grid policing is practiced throughout Chinese cities. Surveillance has been extended to rural areas as well through the Sharp Eyes (xueliang) Project. AI and smart policing continue to evolve, with camera density increasing at a constant pace. Other initiatives, such as the social credit system (Tsai, Wang, and Lin Reference Tsai, Wang and Lin2021) and blacklists are also expanding, even though there are questions about how well the different bureaucratic and regional blacklists are integrated and whether they can meaningfully be used to exert social control by naming and shaming those who engage in transgressive behavior (Arsène Reference Arsène2019; Jee Reference Jee2022). Future advances in AI may enable more rapid and more precise response to protests that would make negotiation and compromise even less likely.

One question that we should examine is whether COVID-19 has introduced a major rupture in surveillance and information gathering. As of 2024, we can say that the pandemic did not function as a critical juncture in information collection. The ultra-intrusive surveillance for reasons of public health was repealed in 2023. However, the pre-pandemic systems persist and are continuously being upgraded. Perhaps the best illustration of the mélange of analog and digital practices is that community policing remains an important part of information gathering, reinforced through pre-pandemic upgrades of grid governance like the “constructing a peaceful China” initiative, as described in the Introduction to this Element. Grid policing relies on a high density of surveillance cameras and big data algorithms, but importantly, it also uses human intelligence collectors that enable a rapid reaction (Zhongyang Zhengfawei Bangongting Reference Zhengfawei Bangongting2021a). Visible and secret informants have not been made redundant by COVID-19 (Zhongyang Zhengfawei Bangongting Reference Zhengfawei Bangongting2021b).

Fundamentally, however, the question that is raised is whether repression can function as an effective long-term strategy to ensure regime resilience in China. There is no reason for the party leadership to think so. Although all autocracies are repressive, those that survive for a long period of time adopt selective repression (Dimitrov Reference Dimitrov2023). Neither sending millions of ethnic minorities to labor camps (as occurred in Xinjiang in the 2010s) nor implementing ubiquitous surveillance (with the potential to impose swift punishment) will be tolerated over the long term. Even if COVID-19 provided an excuse for extending surveillance further, eventually the pendulum swung back and pent-up frustrations were publicly expressed in the November–December 2022 protests, leading to the repeal of the zero-COVID policy that had resulted in severe mass lockdowns and widespread physical misery and psychological suffering for vast swaths of the Chinese population. Totalistic surveillance and mass repression, even under the guise of protecting public health, are ineffective long-term survival formulas.

6.3 Looking at the Future of the CCP

We end this Element on a mixed note. On the one hand, there is no denying the formidable achievements of the CCP, which has managed to stay in power for an extraordinarily long time. In 2023, the CCP matched the record of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which ruled for 74 years (1917–91). Most remarkable about the Chinese case is that the CCP has not only survived but it has thrived. While repression and ideological legitimacy may be sufficient for survival, as indicated by the North Korean experience, the Chinese formula of resilience has relied on the suite of adaptations reviewed in this volume. Implementing these adaptations has required considerable efforts on the part of Chinese leaders. Yet those adaptations have delivered extraordinary rewards in the form of communist regime resilience.

As the adaptations are ossifying and as the regime is unwilling to entertain ideas about political liberalization, the question of the future of China arises with great urgency. A decade into the Xi Jinping era, it is clear that repression has become harsher and more frequent. Although repression is used in all nondemocratic regimes, increases in the rate of deployment is a sign of weakness rather than strength. Autocracies with sophisticated governance mechanisms wield repression in a highly calculated, selective, and infrequent manner. This is not what we have witnessed in China since 2012. The implications of this repressive turn are worrying. While repression is essential for regime survival, resilience requires ongoing adaptation; this is one lesson we learned from the collapse of the single-party communist systems in 1989–91 and from the experience of those regimes that outlasted the Cold War.

Are there prospects for renewed CCP adaptation? The third term that Xi Jinping secured at the Twentieth Party Congress in 2022 will consolidate the repressive turn and will presumably lead to further ossification of the four adaptations highlighted in this Element. This will mean that China has opted for mere regime survival rather than for dynamic resilience. But political scientists need to be humble when prognosticating. The element of surprise (Kuran Reference Kuran1991) is what makes real-world events exciting and what helps us refine our theories. China has surprised us before. It may well do so again. Although empowering civil society and gradual political liberalization seem highly unlikely, reinvigorating adaptive governance and relaxing repression may lie in China’s future.