The University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies Michigan Monographs in Chinese Studies Volume 56 Citizens and Groups in Contemporary China edited by Victor C. Falkenheim Ann Arbor Center for Chinese Studies The University of Michigan 1987 Copyright® 1987 by Center for Chinese Studies The University of Michigan Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Citizens and groups in contemporary China. Includes bibliographies. 1. Pressure groups—China—Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Political participation—China —Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. China—Politics and government—1949- —Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Falkenheim, Victor C, 1940- JQ1514.P7C58 1985 322.4 f 3 f 0951 85-114987 ISBN 0-89264-065-0 ISBN 0-89264-066-9 (pbk.) Printed in the United States of America Cover by Eric M. Ernst Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities/ Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program. The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ISBN 978-0-89264-065-2 (hardcover) ISBN 978-0-89264-066-9 (paper) ISBN 978-0-472-12788-7 (ebook) ISBN 978-0-472-90184-5 (open access) CONTENTS List of Contributors vii Preface ix Chapter 1. Citizen and Group Politics in China: An Introduction Victor C. Falkenheim 1 Chapter 2. Public and Private Interests and the Participatory Ethic in China Lowell Dittmer 17 Chapter 3. Communist Social Structure and Workers' Politics in China Andrew G. Walder 45 Chapter 4. Political Participation of Peasants in China John Burns 91 Chapter 5. Riding the Tiger: The Political Life of China's Scientists Richard P. Suttmeier 123 Chapter 6. Dissident Intellectuals in the People's Republic of China Merle Goldman 159 Chapter 7. Leadership and Participation: The Case of Shanghai's Managers Lynn T. White III 189 Chapter 8. The Role of the Military in Chinese Politics Harry Harding 213 Notes 257 Index 307 VI LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS JOHN P. BURNS is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Hong Kong. LOWELL DITTMER is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Universriy of California at Berkeley. VICTOR C. FALKENHEIM is Associate Professor of Political Science and Chairman of the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto. MERLE GOLDMAN is Professor of History at Boston University. HARRY HARDING, JR. is Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. RICHARD P. SUTTMEIER is Henry Bristol Professor of International Affairs at Hamilton College. ANDREW G. WALDER is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. LYNN T. WHITE III is Professor of Politics at Princeton University. vn PREFACE Victor C. Falkenheim This volume began with two symposia held in 1977 and 1978. The first, a workshop on "The Pursuit of Interest in China," was held in August 1977 at the University of Michigan, and was organized by Michel Oksenberg and Richard Baum. It was supported by a grant from the Joint Committee on Contemporary China of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies, using funds provided by the Andrew Mellon Foundation. Its principal goal was to use detailed case studies to explore the relevance of interest group approaches to the stud}' of Chinese politics. The second, a panel organized by the editor for the 1978 Chicago meeting of the Association of Asian Studies, sought to apply participatory approaches to the role of social groups in the Chinese political process. The striking degree of overlap in the focus, methodology, and participants in both meetings suggested to a number of the paper writers that there was a need for a more eclectic approach which would focus simultaneously on individual and group actors. The recognition that a volume based on such an approach might serve the needs of students and scholars seeking to examine the dynamics of informal influence and power in China was the stim- ulus for publishing the studies presented here in book form. Three of the chapters in the current volume were originally drafts prepared for the 1977 workshop; two were initially presented at the 1978 meeting in Chicago. Three other chapters were commis- sioned later as the volume took shape through our correspondence and meetings of 1980 and 1981. All have been revised to take account of the dramatic revelations of the post-Mao years. IX CHAPTER 1 Citizen and Group Politics in China: An Introduction Victor C. Falkenheim The first systematic exposition of interest group approaches to the study of policy-making in Marxist-Leninist polities appeared al- most two decades ago. Since that time, periodic challenges notwith- standing, such approaches have become almost universally regarded as essential tools of substantive policy analysis, reflecting the in- creasing importance of group activity in modernizing socialist systems. 1 Although man} r conceptual and methodological issues remain unresolved, "pluralist" perspectives have gained wide accep- tance. DahPs recent call for comparative study of the distinctive forms of "organizational pluralism" within "hegemonic regimes" is suggestive of the extent of that acceptance. 2 Paradoxically, interest group approaches, though first applied to the post-Stalin U.S.S.R., quickly took root in Chinese studies, despite the significant gap between China and the Soviet Union in stage of revolutionary development and in economic structure. Early scholar- ship on the post-1949 period in China tended to favor totalitarian or mobilization paradigms, reflecting the vigorous transformative programs being undertaken by the youthful post-revolutionary regime. But, as interest group approaches gained influence in the broader field of communist studies, developments in China prepared the ground for their ready acceptance. The collapse of the Great Leap Forward (1958-60) and the state's subsequent retreat in the face of grass roots opposition to radical initiatives revealed the limits of monolithic models of state power. The sharp intra-elite political cleavages that subsequently emerged shattered images of a unified senior leadership. In response, scholars moved toward the use of a variety of conflict models, a shift which was accelerated by the onset of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s. The extent of the open 2 Victor C. Falkenheim elite factional conflict and violent clashes between mobilized social interests at the lower levels of society revealed during this period revolutionized scholarly perceptions of the political order. Franz Schurman, revising his landmark study, Ideology and Organization in Communist China, called for a more society-centered approach, acknowledging that events had called into question his stress on the political potene}' of "ideology and organization" which he now saw as vulnerable to individual and societal challenges to state power. 3 Sim- ilarly, James Townsend, who in his classic study of political partici- pation in China had expressed skepticism about the utility of group politics approaches, later concluded that his analysis had understated the potentialities for group formation and pressure. 4 Michel Oksenberg's pioneering effort to delineate the resources, strategies, and influence of China's principal occupational groups opened the way for a growing number of specialized studies of groups in Chinese politics. 5 Three kinds of studies resulted from these changing perceptions and approaches. One focused on the policy-making process and sought to explore the impact of intra-elite cleavages on policy continuity and change. 6 A second focused more on policy implemen- tation than on formulation and hypothesized that significant issue- area variation exists in the policy-making process as a function of bureaucratic conflict. This literature examined inter alia such policy areas as health, education, commerce, and water policy. 7 The third examined individual and group political strategies and the policies that resulted, focusing on occupational groups and social strata, including workers and managers. 8 These studies confirmed the importance of focusing on interest politics, established the critical importance of the bureaucratic setting of policy formulation and implementation, and clarified the significance of the prevailing pat- tern of elite conflict in shaping interest politics within the bureaucrat- ic structure and in society. The validity of these insights has been amply confirmed by the explosion of interest politics in the 1980s in response to the reform initiatives of Deng's modernizing coalition. Despite these advances, no real consensus has been reached on the role of interests in the policy-making process. In particular, con- siderable skepticism persists regarding the influence of broad social groups. Though most analysts agree that focusing on elite participa- tion at higher levels in the political system was useful, they disagree on the question of how such individual, factional, or organizational interest articulation is structured. Nor has agreement been reached on how best to describe or conceptualize the pattern of state-societ}' Citizen and Group Politics in China 3 interaction, either in terms of corporatist or more traditional "directed society" metaphors. 9 Finally, little agreement has been achieved regarding the most appropriate models for discussing the long-term transformational and development processes underway. What models best take ac- count, for example, of the changing pattern of group politics today? It seems clear that the current more visible and vigorous advocacy of social and economic interests and the more accommodating posture of the regime are in part a reflection of short-term liberalizing trends, but are equally linked to the major generational and systemic transi- tion ahead. As the Chinese seek to devise new institutional forms to accommodate the changing pattern of group and individual demands in the context of eroding doctrinal allegiance, comparative and long- term perspectives are needed to understand those changes. The authors of the following chapters seek to examine these questions and explore how demands at the grass roots are brokered into the policy process, how choices are shaped at the middle level, and how competing demands are reconciled at the top. While differ- ing in our concepts and frameworks, we agree that the analysis of interests, influence, and policy requires a historically textured, multi- level focus, exploring not only activities of social groups and aggre- gates, but also focusing on the vertical links which tie grass roots participation by individuals to the strategies of middle-level adminis- trators and to the critically important policy and loyalty groups at the apex of the S3^stem. Skilling and Griffith, in their pioneering volume on interest groups in the U.S.S.R., deliberately eschewed a direct concern with social groups and elite factions. 10 We, however, prefer to emphasize the role of social aggregates, professional groups, and bureaucratic interest groups at the base and intermedi- ate levels of the structure, exploring the interactions among them. Interest Politics at the Basic Level: Individuals and "Social Aggregates" Students of comparative communist systems have generally been reluctant to assign any great significance to interest-oriented participation by broad social, occupational, or generational aggre- gates. Workers, peasants, and youth, among others, are credited, at least hypothetically, with having distinct sets of common interests. However, they are seen as lacking the cohesion and organizational capability to pursue them on a collective basis. Victor C. Falkenheim This impotence is parti}' attributed to the state's hostility to open and organized interest advocacy, and partly to the size and diversity of these interest communities. The mechanisms provided by the state to accommodate or channel citizen interests (e.g., work unit or local elections, mass campaigns, trade unions, or peasant associations) are almost universally seen as preempting rather than facilitating autonomous interest articulation. Operating within these institutional constraints citizens must express their interests on an individual basis at the worksite or communal level. The result is a diffuse and localized pattern of participation, which is viewed as lacking in broader policy impact. Thus, Brzezinski and Huntington, in their early and influential formulation, labeled the social aggre- gates at the base of the policy-making hierarchy "amorphous social forces," on the grounds that they lacked the structure necessary for the organized pursuit of their own interests. 11 A similar logic underlies Skilling and Griffith's exclusion of social groups from their study of interest politics in the Soviet Union. These views do not deny the reality of intense and regular citizen involvement at the residential and worksite level in socialist systems. They simply assert that this activity constitutes an isolated realm, only tenuously linked to the policy-making chain. A recent expression of this view can be found in Bialer's contention that in the U.S.S.R. seldom do the low politics of individual participation and the high politics of state polic}^ formulation intersect. 12 There is obviously merit in these views of participation as atomized and limited. The chapters by Burns and Walder show that the bulk of non-ritual interest-oriented participation by workers and peasants in China takes place at the work unit or residential level. It seems clear that the scope of that participation is narrow, with indi- viduals concerned principally with seeking remedies for individual grievances concerning specific local applications of general policy. Moreover, citizens tend to be skeptical of the worth of formal peti- tions or official organizations and channels and are fearful of the sanctions that often accompany open and direct interest advocacy. On the other hand, as these same studies also suggest, Chinese citizens do in fact regularly pursue their interests with a repertoire of tactics tailored to these constraints. Though they often disdain formal modes of participation, citizens use a wider range of informal strategies which range from individually buttonholing officials to reliance on informal networks of friends and associates, or passive resistance. Moreover, this participation is informed by a keen consciousness of the context in which participation takes place. 13 Citizen and Group Politics in China 5 Peasants, as John Burns shows, are keenly sensitive to shifts in policy, alterations in the balance of elite factions, and the potential for policy change, to which they respond quickly. It is important, then, to recognize that participation can fre- quently be both constrained and effective. This paradox reflects sig- nificant structural and normative features of the Chinese political system. First, as Lowell Dittmer shows in chapter 2, state ideology accords a central legitimacy to the expression of individual and class interests. The state is committed on the basis of mass line theory to accommodate self-interested local or class-based interests. The Party's mobilizational style of leadership often relies on explicit ap- peals to the interests of specific segments of societ}^ and recognizes the importance of class and interest politics in its style of gover- nance. Thus, despite the primacy assigned to the interests of the whole in formulating policy and the monopoly claimed by the Party in mediating and aggregating interests, local and partial interests have an enduring, if contingent, legitimacy. Moreover, in the struc- ture of the Chinese state both party and state hierarchies extend down to the village, neighborhood, and shop level, so that individual actions at the unit level are transmitted directly to local agents of state power. This provides an important way of measuring local response to national policies. That the system is constructed to con- sider this response in policy-making can be seen from the structure of the polic3 r -making process, in which polic} 7 formulation and imple- mentation are merged in a sequence of local experimentation, testing, adaption, and synthesis. The role of local units in policy-making calls into question the conventional distinction between low and high politics, between local and central politics, and between occupational and civic politics. 14 To a certain extent these realities have always been recognized. Brzezinski and Huntington, though deprecating the importance of "amorphous social forces," noted their ability to "exert pressures which over a long period of time cannot be altogether ignored.' 715 Further, though lacking the attributes of groups, these aggregates were capable of influencing policy indirectly, by compelling the Party to anticipate their collective reactions; in effect, treating them as groups. David M. Lampton, in his study of Chinese health policy has, in fact, argued that "the cumulative impact of individual acts at the bottom of the system" can be "as effective as conscious articula- tion in setting the leadership agenda." 16 The discussions in this volume then, support a definition of group action that takes account of the influence that groups of Victor C. Falkenheim individuals with similar attributes and interests, acting separately, can have on government decisions. 1 ' However, only moving up the vertical hierarchy to examine interest articulation at the intermedi- ate levels of state administration can show the mechanisms through which individual interest advocacy shapes government policy. Intermediate-Level Participation Most interest group analyses of hegemonic regimes are based on the premise that effective pressure can be wielded only from within the party-state structure and that effective participation therefore takes the form of "organizational politics." But, which is the most useful level on which to focus within the vertical power structure? Griffith's analysis of "intermediate participation' 7 in the U.S.S.R. emphasizes focusing on "politically relevant individuals who occupy intermediate positions" between the "leadership and the masses of the led." However, Griffith's own analysis is concerned with specific functional elites and his use of the notion of intermediate participa- tion leaves open the question of which levels are most critical for analysis. 18 Most analysts envisage the floor of the policy structure in China as composed of a large number of grass roots factory and farm cadres who, as a crucial gate-keeping sub-elite, selectively broker mass demands into the policy system. Although their official func- tions are directed toward policy implementation, their role in trans- mitting local response to intermediate levels is of such critical impor- tance that some scholars have gone so far as to suggest that com- munal or unit participation in policy-making might be the critical starting point of any analysis. 19 Yet, the characteristics of unit participation and their links to national-level policy conflict need to be spelled out. As the chapters in this volume by Burns, Walder, and White suggest, basic- and intermediate-level production and accounting units tend to acquire a relatively stable conception of their corporate interests, shaped by such objective factors as the composition of the work force, the unit's resource endowment, and its production and marketing opportuni- ties. These in turn define a unit's needs and ultimately its policy preferences. The ability of lower-level organizations to pursue and defend unit interests stems in part from the legitimacy accorded by the state to unit autonomy (zizhuquan), which entails the right to adapt policy to local needs and realities. This right can be invoked by unit leaders and their constituents to resist excessive administrative Citizen and Group Politics in China 7 pressure under the rubric of what Mao called in 1958 the "right to resist/' 20 The system's capacity to use flexibility at the local level, like its use of local response, reflects the consciously experimental character of the policy-making process in China, in which central- level policymakers process initiatives and choices generated at the basic level. The bubble-up character of policy-making hinges signifi- cantly on local diversity and revolves around a communications and reporting system which identifies typical or advanced "models." 21 When central policies shift, public media and bureaucratic reporting systems are directed to refocus their attention and praise to those units which best exemplify the benefits of the new policy. For exam- ple, when a moderate line emerges at the center, model "advanced" units will tend to be drawn from the reservoir of successful "conser- vative" units whose resources and experience make their perfor- mance suitable for popularization and emulation. When policy shifts in a radical direction these units will either disappear from the press or will be attacked as "black models" while their "progressive" coun- terparts will acquire visibility as "pace-setting units." A noteworthy aspect of this system is the tendency for entrepre- neurial bureaucrats to search for confirming experience to buttress their policy preferences. Administrative policy-making in China in part pits competing vertical policy coalitions against one another, with bureaucrats at various levels aligning with like-minded produc- ing units in an effort to tilt the reporting process in favor of the pre- ferred policy outcome. In periods of low-intensity polic} 7 conflict, these informal clusters are quasi-legitimate but in periods of high- intensity conflict they crystallize into factionalized, patron-client rela- tionships enmeshing affected units in a highly politicized policy struggle. 22 There is ample evidence to show that many industrial and agricultural units that benefitted from Great Leap Forward initia- tives managed to stave off conservative pressures in the early 1960s. During the Cultural Revolution such units were lauded for managing to "resist the sinister wave of contraction" of those years. Andors has documented the significant post-Leap continuity of many organizational and management reforms in industrial enterprises. 23 One of the most closely studied examples of unit independence in the rural sphere in the 1960s is Dazhai brigade. Meisner has shown clearly how Dazhai resisted both left and right policy initiatives in the early- and mid-1960s, building on community solidarity and a variety of horizontal and vertical alliances. His term for the process, "political self-advocacy," captures an important aspect of the 8 Victor C. Falkenheim reciprocal links between policy groups in the middle administration and producing units at the base. 24 A parallel process at work during the Cultural Revolution era which insulated enterprises and farming units from what is now described as a decade of coercive ultra-leftism is clearty shown in the chapters by Burns and Walder. 25 In spelling out the reasons why "agriculture had maintained a certain degree of development" de- spite the Gang of Four's "rabid sabotage" of rural policy, People's Daily noted the heroic role of "vast numbers of rural basic-level cadres," who "kept to their posts" and withstood the "perverse acts" of the Gang. 26 The extent to which cadres and farm communities were able to derail the "Learn from Dazhai" Movement in the early 1970s is vividly illustrated in John Burns' discussion of the fate of this program in South China. The extent of unit independence and continuity is particularly well illustrated by the histories of the new model units which have come to the fore since 1978. For example, Xiashitang production bri- gade, located in the former radical stronghold of Yipin prefecture in Sichuan, has become an exemplar of rural diversification, its success beginning with a 1964 decision to increase farm cash income through diversification. Strikingly, the "secret" of its prosperity was held to be its "courage to stick the polic} 7 of encouraging agriculture and industry to be combined" and "refusing to yield even when held up by the Gang as a 'sinister' model" (emphasis added). 2 ' Intermediate-Level Participation and Organizational Interests Moving up the policy-making hierarchy from the unit level, the dynamics of interest conflict become progressively more difficult to analyze. This stems equally from the secrec}^ that shrouds the policy-making process and from the greater complexity of interest articulation at intermediate levels. As Harding and Suttmeier show in the cases of the military and scientific communities, intra- organizational interest cleavages make questionable the possibility of identifying a homogeneous, corporate organizational interest. In addition, the limited, largely documentary evidence allows us at best to discern broad opinion clusters associated with individual actors and advocates, not with organizations. In response to these analytic and empirical constraints, most researchers have embraced Griffith's tendency analysis perspective, which stresses the importance of gauging the broad thrust of elite policy preferences. It is seen as the Citizen and Group Politics in China 9 best way to capture the myriad parallel individual articulations which constitute the core of organizational interest politics. In elaboration of this perspective a number of scholars, including Suttmeier in this volume, have found useful economic or rational choice models of administrative behavior. Of particular importance are Hirschman's notions of "voice" and "exit," economic terms which posit two main choices for dissatisfied bureaucrats seeking change, either to leave the organization or fight for change from within. But, if researchers accept the need to center research on the individual administrator or policy specialist, it remains important to identify and analyze the larger polic}^ networks within which they operate. One approach is tailored to the evidence supplied by open policy debates, seeking to identify contending policy groups or opinion clusters without drawing conclusions as to their underlying structure or source of solidarity. A more complex, though inevitably more speculative, conception of intermediate-level participation draws upon the bureaucratic politics model, emphasizing the fusion of organizational loyalty and personal interest as the main cement of policy networks. An alternative that challenges the pure bureaucrat- ic politics model and in the view of its advocates is better tailored to China's cultural context, urges the merits of clientelist approaches with their explicit^ personalistic perspectives on group formation and maintenance. This perspective receives strong support in Walder's analysis of working class politics in this volume. The most forceful challenge to the bureaucratic politics model has been issued by Lucian Pye. 28 Pye contends that China, though indisputably "a bureaucratic polity," lacks bureaucratic politics in the conventional sense of institutional conflicts over resources, au- thority, and budget allocations. Instead, the principal pattern of con- flict discerned by Pye is intra-elite factional strife fueled by concerns over security and power. He also asserts that factions rarely, if ever, represent clearly defined institutional, geographic, or generational interests. Rather, they are best seen as networks of individuals tied together by personal loyalty and common interests, and hence not "strongly motivated to assert generalizable political interests." China is thus, in Pye's view, characterized by a disjunction between "policy and administration," resulting in a generally "weak articulation of institutionalized and specialized interests." Pye singles out the paradoxical identification in the 1970s of the Chinese air force, the most modern segment of the military, with the anti-technological goals of the radicals as perhaps the best illustration of this divorce between institutional interests and policy stance. He explains the