Authoritarian Impermanence by Nathan

Authoritarian systems have been with us longer and ruled more people than democratic systems have. Due in part to the narrow definition of authoritarianism. The Chinese system is poorly understood and complicated: Mixes political monopoly with individual liberty Personalist power with legal procedure Repression with responsiveness. Regime changes may have been affected due to: Rapid economic growth and polarization Social turbulence Rising middle class Emergence of the Internet. The CCP regime is willing to change in any way that helps it to stay in power, but is unwilling to relax the ban on autonomous political forced. Most likely transition going to be like the Tiananmen model: 1. Robust plurality of disaffected citizens 2. Catalytic even that sends signals to social forces to rise up 3. Split in leadership China knows it is vulnerable to such a scenario which is why they try so hard to prevent these things from emerging and outlaw forms of mobilization and heavily monitor society.

Chinas Trapped Transition by Minxin Pei

1949- Mao takes power: a period of time in which china was doing relatively well 1959-The Great Leap Forward: the massive collectivization of farms Attempt to modernize rapidly 20-30 million Chinese die of starvation Mao starts losing power 1966- Cultural Revolution Similar to Stalins purges Attacks on Maos opponents and intellectuals Attempted to crush all religious movements 1976-Mao dies, Deng takes power 1988- Chinas economic conditions decline Late 1980s- Village elections in rural China began Deng was most concerned about overcenterlization of power In response, he introduced constitutional reforms to strengthen the collective leadership of the party. However, many felt that Chinas economic reform could not progress without political reform transpiring along with economic reform.

We should not cede the ideas of freedom, democracy, and human rights to capitalism (50) Deng focused on separating the party from the state, establishing inner-party democracy, and the development of the socialist party. Tried to create a system of checks and balances. People began to demand for elections to be held to further democracy. The emergence of the NPC and Local Peoples Congresses (LPCs) were thought to be a sign of a move towards pluralism.... BUT the CCP continued to hold most the the authority and even had to approve candidates for the NPC. The NPC did enact many economic laws but rarely asserts its formal oversight power. NPC and LPCs membership does not mirror Chinese society but rather represents bureaucratic interests since its constituents are Chinas elite. Legal Reform: Chinas legal system is ineffective because the CCP does not allow judges to exercise their power Despite this, some progress has been made and the number of legal professions in China has increased dramatically despite Chinas restrictions on lawyers and who they can represent. This control is evident in court which is highly politicized, high level of corruption involving judges Possible Solutions: Establish separate judicial systems (central and local system); form cross-regional courts; have the central government fund the courts. Elections: In the late 1980s village elections in rural China began. OBrien- important because this lead to full citizenship status of its rural resident Oi and Rozelle- found that the implementation of elections did not change the disparite power balance During the 1990s, the Chinese government used demonstration sites to develop proper election procedure. In a 2002 poll 69% of the population had voted. However, a degree of competitiveness is not always present... Selective Repression: Key feature of development autocracy is the selective use of repression which offers more advantages than mass terror which is both politically and economically costly. Using this method, rulers can focus on combatting their political opponents Responding to the Information Revolution: In the 1990s, China effectively responded the emergence of the internet by enforcing restrictions and jailing dissidents. Trained Internet Police to patrol and get rid of any information that may be considered harmful to the Chinese government.

Co-option of Elites and Entrepreneurs: CCP launched a campaign to recruit intellectuals, professionals and the CCPs dominance in the economic sector served as an incentive for individuals to establish ties with the regime.