MCLC: The coming Chinese crackup (6)

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The coming Chinese crackup (6)
I wanted to thank David Shambaugh (WSJ, 3/6/15) for pulling no punches and stating clearly his opinions on what he sees is going on in China. There is one point I would like to add for consideration, and that is the historical perspective. The CCP has a penchant for justification and legitimization by propagating the myth of ‘seamless’ historical transition. The post-Mao shift to early-stage capitalism, for example, had to be justified rhetorically before the move away from Maoism would appear legitimate. The document used for that justification was the 1981 Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China. The standing orthodoxy of the day was transformed into heterodoxy, by introducing the notion that Mao had made mistakes (the familiar 70:30 ratio). This created enough rhetorical space for the party to forge new directions without breaking the historical continuum.  The CCP has granted itself the privilege to assume whatever ideological shape it needs in order to maintain power. It simply requires the manufacture of an ideological discourse to support the new direction (think “Three Represents”) – all under the rhetorical space allowed by, for example, “with Chinese characteristics”.
The reforms set in motion by Deng Xiaoping and enacted by the CCP since the end of the Cultural Revolution set the nation on a course toward continued economic reform. At the Third Plenum in 1978, the Party introduced gradual modifications of ideology (e.g. ‘Sinification of Marxism’, ‘primary stage of socialism’), which allowed it to pursue the idea of a ‘moderately prosperous society’ (xiaokang shehui). The introduction of these abstractions (‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’, ‘socialist market economy’, etc.), have broadened the discursive area from which the CCP can rhetorically justify any changes deemed necessary. The meanings of these formulations are ambiguous, and as such, they deflate contestation at the outset. Outside of the ideologues who conceive them, few actually know what they mean. Acutely aware of the vulnerability brought about by ideological gaps, the government is still trying to construct ‘correct’ explanations for what actually happened. The media, under President Xi, have been commissioned to ‘heavily emphasize’ a discourse of ‘correctly dealing’ with the ideological transition between noticeably inconsistent orders of discourse. It is against this façade of ideological congruence that dissidents are positioned as malcontents and unbelievers – saboteurs of the ‘harmonious society’, ushering in Xi’s age of the digitized panopticon. How can this succeed in the long run?
In other words, ideology (except for a few standing tenets) is negotiable. Power, on the other hand, is not. Shambaugh’s analysis is daring (on several levels), and in this age of intimidation for fear of blacklisting, I find it refreshingly forthright.
Joe Alvaro <jjalvaro-c at my.cityu.edu.hk>
by denton.2 at osu.edu on March 14, 2015
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