This week on Sinica, Kaiser welcomes back University of Michigan political scientist Yuen Yuen Ang, who discusses a recent piece in the Journal of Democracy titled “How Resilient is the CCP?” The essay examines why Xi Jinping surprisingly seeks to retain a competent and selectively adaptive bureaucracy, despite his personalist style of rule
3:51 – Summarizing debates on Chinese governance in the current China watcher field
8:43 – Defining the concept of institutionalization and contextualizing it to China
13:39 – Explaining Xi’s bureaucratic objectives: maintaining competence but limiting autonomy
18:57 – Remaining areas of autonomy for China’s state bureaucracy
22:11 – Key areas where Xi weakened bureaucracy
26:08 – Institutionalization prior to the Xi era
29:00 – Main sources of resilience and threat under Xi’s new model for authoritarianism
31:45 – Fundamental difference between Mao and Xi
34:52 – The revival of state bureaucracy and technocrats after Mao’s death
40:13 – How do we understand the tension between expertise and ideology in Xi’s governance agenda?
46:15 – Historical roots of technocracy in the Chinese government
49:09 – The CCP’s technocratic bureaucracy as an integral source of resiliency
A complete transcript of this podcast is available on TheChinaProject.com.
Recommendations:
Yuen Yuen: Chinese drama series Zǒuxiàng gònghé 走向共和 (Towards the Republic); and Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire by David Remnick
Kaiser: Children of Earth and Sky; A Brightness Long Ago and All the Seas of the World a historical fantasy novel trilogy by Guy Gavriel Kay
