How the Communist Party Guided China to Success

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/world/asia/china-politics-xi-jinping.html

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Sebastian Heilmann, 51, is the founding president of the Mercator Institute of Chinese Studies (Merics) in Berlin and a government professor at the University of Trier. He has published extensively on Chinese industrial and technological policies, the Chinese Communist Party’s organizational structure and how today’s China reflects the party’s history as a revolutionary organization forged in remote, scattered regions of the country.

One of Mr. Heilmann’s major works is a comprehensive guide to how China is governed, now updated and translated into English as “China’s Political System.” This is a wide-ranging examination of how the system works — how it guides the economy, provides services to people and formulates new policies. An online version of the book will be updated every two to three months, allowing readers to stay in touch with the creation of government agencies or campaigns.

In an interview, Mr. Heilmann discussed the underappreciated strengths of China’s political system as well as how, under President Xi Jinping, it may have cast off some of the openness to experimentation that contributed to its success in recent decades.

What is striking about your book are the case studies, showing how different ministries and commissions actually function.

We wanted to show problem-solving, or what’s known as the provision of public goods. For example, how exactly does it create a rural health care system? How does it ensure food safety? These are issues that governments around the world have to deal with. It’s about more than ideology. It’s about how the system actually works.

Another unusual feature that we try to explain is how the system of cadres [party officials] functions. In the West, policies are set by law and then carried out by civil servants. In China, policy implementation depends on cadres. They are given clear metrics and goals for achieving things and then told to go do them. Major policy shifts and top-down initiatives are managed through this cadre system, not by making laws.

For example?

Xi Jinping’s anticorruption campaign. The Communist Party has expanded and mobilized a parallel disciplinary bureaucracy with great powers to step in and investigate. But it has no clearly defined legal basis. Its operations are directed by party documents and internal directives.

A key question you pose is how much of China’s success can be ascribed to this political system. What’s the answer?

There are several important elements. One is the party successfully sets long-term political goals, such as the modernization of industry or technology, or infrastructure planning. As Deng Xiaoping made clear in the 1980s, it can concentrate resources in priority areas. I see this as a strength in the initial phase of development, from say the 1980s to the mid-2000s.

Another crucial element is experimentation. This is something we ignore in the West — how unexpectedly flexible China’s deeply bureaucratic system can be. This flexibility has been demonstrated in the ability to set up pilot projects in special economic zones, in local tests — such as for housing reform or bankruptcy in state enterprises. Very difficult measures were regularly tested in pilot projects for several years before national laws were enacted.

You show how this flexibility arose from the Communist Party’s revolutionary experience.

This is very important. Because we have to ask ourselves, how did a socialist bureaucratic system get this kind of adaptability that you didn’t see in Eastern Europe? It’s due to the specific historical experiences of this party [in the 1930s and 1940s before coming to power]. It controlled very spread-out and not contiguous districts. So when it tried something like land reform it was done experimentally and in a decentralized fashion. This was fundamentally different from the Soviet Union.

This willingness to experiment was also a hallmark of the Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin periods.

It only largely ended with Xi Jinping with the idea of “top-level design.” There was a feeling that these decentralized experiments contributed to corruption and a lack of discipline. So now every policy initiative has to be approved by the center. This has taken a lot of the energy out of China’s political system.

There was an argument that reforms must proceed in sequence, so they had to be coordinated. But the effect has been that not much has happened since 2013 [when Mr. Xi became president] in terms of ground-up problem-solving. If you rely on hierarchy and discipline, the courage to experiment at the lower levels is squeezed out. People are afraid of trying things.

Ironically, it’s only now that some countries are looking at China as a model. Can it be a model?

For many years I would have said no, but many countries are struggling with how to deal with pressing basic problems like maintaining internal security, building physical infrastructure and providing jobs. These are the basis of populist movements around the world. China is a point of orientation. It can’t be duplicated because these other countries don’t have a Communist Party with the special history and features of China’s. But in terms of considering illiberal, state-directed solutions, China is often cited as an example of how an authoritarian government can deal with things differently. China’s experience is thus a permanent question mark for the world when they ask if the Western model is the best.

Toward the end of the book you offer several scenarios for how China might develop, and poll Merics staffers for their views. Most support the first scenario, which is a “centralized and disciplined party and security state (the Xi Jinping system).” You are less sure, arguing that the risks are greater than people realize.

I’m not sure that the party can achieve everything it’s set out to do. It’s tried to keep a lid on all changes in society, but I doubt this can work over time. There are different lifestyles and forces in society. I’m not sure they can be unified. I’m very skeptical.

Also, we shouldn’t forget that hierarchical systems are susceptible to shocks. If Xi Jinping became seriously ill, what would happen to the political system? The system has been tailored to him. Or, if there are military skirmishes, how will the nationalistic forces in society react?

This system is built for expansion, especially economic expansion, and setbacks are very hard to justify. It’s easier in Western systems because you can change the government. But in China you can’t. So the potential for disruption is greater than people imagine.