Communist Party of China (CPC)

While the CCP asserted unconditional sovereignty over Tibet, the  party was clearly aware of its distinct culture, customs, administrations, and that liberating and transforming Tibet would present unprecedented obstacles. The experience of Tibetans under
Mao’s socialist revolution is a complex picture and often differentiated depending on one’s gender, social status, and political leaning. Despite the CCP’s active attempt to resolve the ingrained divergence and tension between the two sides, the party’s vision of peaceful incorporation was lost to a revolutionary ambition before a voluntary acceptance of socialism was completed, ultimately resulting in the subjugation of Tibetan culture and an uneven absorption of the population.

To suggest, 19th Party Congress had two significant implications: first, it acted as the test case to Xi Jinping’s consolidation of power and, second, it provided a trajectory to assess China’s future political transition. Given this context, the present paper reflects on changing nature of China’s politics and military under the rule of Xi Jinping. Does this exemplify that China is retreating back to its “One-Man Rule”? Is Xi Jinping the new “Tianxia” of PRC?

eninde yön değişikliğine girdiğinde, liberal demokrasilerin beklentisi, ekonomik liberalizme kaçınılmaz olarak siyasal liberalizmin eşlik edeceği ve Çin Komünist Partisi’nin (ÇKP) eninde sonunda çözüleceği yolunda idi. Ancak aradan geçen kırk yılda bu beklentiler gerçekleşmedi. Ekonomik liberalizm göreli olarak derinleştirilmekle birlikte, bu süreci yöneten ÇKP’nin iktidar tekelinin yanı sıra 1949’da Halk Cumhuriyetinin kuruluş aşamasındaki siyasi düzen de (diğer siyasal kurumlar) korundu. ÇHC’nin son kırk yıldaki büyük dönüşümü, hem ülkenin komünist parti eliyle kontrollü bir kapitalizme yönelmesi hem de bu köklü sosyo-ekonomik değişime rağmen mevcut siyasal yapının sürekliliği bağlamında kendine özgüdür.
Türkiye’de 2000’li yılların başından itibaren ÇHC’nin görünürlüğü giderek artmakla birlikte, bu görünürlük daha çok ülkenin artan ekonomik- ticari gücü, uluslararası ve bu arada Türkiye ile ilişkileri kapsamındadır. Akademik çalışmalar da ağırlıkla bu alanlar üzerinde yoğunlaşmıştır. ÇHC’nin yönetsel ve siyasal düzeni, ülkeyi 70 yıldır yöneten, dünyanın en büyük partisi ÇKP hakkında çalışmalar sınırlıdır.
ÇHC siyasal sistemini inceleyen bu çalışmada, ülkenin resmi siyasal rejim tanımı çerçevesinde bu rejimin ÇKP dışındaki bileşenlerinin tarihsel kökenleri, geçirdiği değişim ve günümüzdeki işlevleri analiz edilecektir. Siyasal sistemin omurgasını kuşkusuz, iktidar tekelini kullanan ÇKP oluşturmaktadır. Ancak çalışma, literatürde görece daha az incelenen Çin Halk Siyasi Danışma Konferansı ve diğer siyasal partilerle sınırlandırılmıştır. Ayrı bir inceleme konusu olarak ÇKP doğrudan değil, ÇHC tarihi ve siyasal sistem bağlamında kapsanmaktadır.

This essays looks at the diversity of approaches used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in its politicization of religions. It first provides an overview of continuity with past practices by the Chinese state in the imperial and republican eras to stress the undetermined nature of ideological change in China. Then, it looks at the mechanisms by which the CCP makes religion a political issue and a matter of public concern within broader agendas. It stresses that this politicization of religions has unfolded in two different ways since 1949: besides the negative and coercive approach of the authorities, positive and cooperative strategy are also implemented. The regime hopes religions will be active politically to promote its objectives, such as projecting abroad an image of China’s soft power, raising funds for philanthropic activities within China, or supporting the state ‘patriotic’ agenda. The actions by the CCP suggest that it does not look at all religions as equally valuable to serve its political objectives, as it still maintains a distinction between official and banned religions. The article documents that the state’s encouragement to the revival of some religious activities is selective but on the other hand that CCP views are more nuanced than outsiders assume.

With specific reference to junior secondary schools in Shanghai, China, this qualitative empirical study examines the dynamics and complexities of leadership in school and, in particular, citizenship education exercised by principals and school party secretaries (SPSs), who are de facto equally-ranked school leaders. Specifically, it examines, from a macro- and micro-political theoretical perspective, the interactions between these two types of school leaders, and how they respond to the demands of various school stakeholders, including macro-political actors (e.g., the state) and micro-political actors (e.g., other school leaders, teachers, students and parents), at the school level. Data were gathered from document analysis, non-participant observation and semi-structured interviews with 44 school leaders from 24 schools and two educational officials in Shanghai, conducted in 2011.
This study has four major findings. First, in addition to the leadership responsibilities inherent to their particular portfolios, the interviewed principals and SPSs were also politically and administratively responsible for leading the school and citizenship education, and struggled to balance these (at times conflicting) responsibilities. Second, there were four major school leadership/citizenship education scenarios in which principals and SPSs were torn between faithfully executing state policy demands, adapting those demands to suit the specific needs and conditions of their school, pursuing their professional autonomy, and addressing the interests of different micro-political actors. Third, principals and SPSs enjoyed a complicated working relationship at the micro-political (school) level in which they collaborated to fulfill their responsibilities and respond to school macro- and micro-political actors, while simultaneously competing for power over school leadership and citizenship education. Fourth, principals’ and SPSs’ leadership in school and citizenship education was shaped by inter-related factors, including diverse influences in a multi-leveled world, the integration of politics and education, the demands of macro- and micro-political actors, and personal factors.
To interpret these findings, this study proposes a theoretical framework for understanding leadership in school and citizenship education in China as a political exercise in which school leaders actively use their influence and resources to lead and administer school and citizenship education, resist other school leaders’ (at times contradictory) administrative and political responsibilities, and interact with and mediate between the interests of various actors at the macro- and micro-political levels in response to political, economic and social needs. This theoretical framework is useful for understanding the complexity of school and citizenship education leadership, the micro-political relationship between Chinese principals and SPSs, and their dynamic and complex interactions with macro- and micro-political actors as they fulfill their intertwined political and administrative responsibilities in school leadership and citizenship education.

In the past two years the western media has increased its coverage of the events unfolding in the Xinjiang province of China. Specifically the People’s Republic of China’s response to the challenges they face governing the Xinjiang region. The Uygher people have been placed in reeducation and training camps without due process or court order. Their places of worship and holy sites have been destroyed. They have dealt with restrictions placed upon the practice of their religion, Islam, and have seen invasive ‘security’ measures in the region where they predominantly reside. These actions by the Communist Party of China, the ruling party of the People Republic of China, have led many to ask, why the Uyghers?

The Xinjiang region’s stability is of utmost importance to the physical security, both domestically and internationally, and to the economic security and prosperity of the Chinese nation. The Communist Party of China (CPC) governing the PRC believes that to ensure this security, the region must be stable and under the control of the CPC. In order for the CPC to maintain its legitimacy with China’s greater domestic population, the CPC must ensure the physical security and economic prosperity of the PRC. Without this security and prosperity, unrest and dissent flourishes in Xinjang and the CPC fears this will embolden dissent elsewhere in the PRC. This threatens the national security of the PRC.

According to Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman, Mark Warner “The overwhelming number of counterintelligence cases in our country now involve Chinese nationals…The Chinese spy services are literally threatening Chinese families…If your son or daughter does not come back [from the US] and come back with intellectual property, you the family will be put in jeopardy” (Seldin, 2019).

Drawing on the concept of the spatial fix by Harvey (2001), the paper presents the claim that the goal of the Chinese Communist Party is to retain political legitimacy by maintaining high rates of economic growth by shifting from an export-led growth strategy to a domestic investment and most recently to a foreign investment strategy, thus emphasizing the spatial component of China’s capital accumulation strategy. The shifting strategy is associated with a decline in the rate of return in each of these strategies, posing a challenge to the Chinese accumulation model. This strategy is becoming increasingly less effective as overall economic growth rates decline. It is the weakness of organized labor that makes a rebalancing of the economy from exports and fixed-asset investments to consumption more difficult. As such the paper contributes to a discussion that situates labor struggles and efforts of the CCP to retain political legitimacy within the broader political economy context, which is relevant to political and economic sociology.

The slackening pace of important economic reforms, as well as the stimulus measures taken in response to the 2008 crisis to boost investments, have all led to a huge build-up of debt and created imbalances in the Chinese economy, including in the financial markets and the industrial sector. The new generation of Chinese leadership has previously shown a strong ambition to overcome the status quo and resume reforms, setting out a new economic reform agenda in 2013.

Vested interests, which grew out of state owned enterprises and the bureaucracy, have been regarded as the main line of resistance to further reforms. President Xi Jinping has centralised the decision-making over economic reform by expanding the structures of the Communist Party of China. The new tools for implementing reform turned out to be marred by several defects, which contributed to further stagnation of key reforms. Moreover, the slowing down of China’s economic growth has sparked a debate among the country’s top decision makers on the ultimate shape of economic policy, and the pace of subsequent reforms.

It doesn’t take a deep understanding of Newton’s Third Law to assume that Xi Jinping’s brazen power consolidation may see an internal solidification of dissent and an external hardening of anti-China sentiment among neighbours and global powers. It is also likely that civilizational legacy, geographic location and status as the rival preeminent power in Asia will compel India to play a leadership role in that global pushback against China’s neo-imperialism. Signs of that pushback are already visible.

Kina har gjennomgått store forandringer de siste årene, men oppmerksomheten har vært konsentrert om de økonomiske reformene og ikke de politiske. Denne oppgaven skal fokusere på Deng Xiaopings politiske reformer og rekonstruere noen sentrale trekk ved diskusjonen om forholdet mellom kommununistpartiets makt, personstyre og «rule of law». Hva var bakgrunnen for de politiske reformene, hvordan ble de begrunnet og hvordan påvirket reformene styringssystemet?