China's Trapped Transition_ The Limits of Developmental Autocracy - Minxin Pei [112]
Mass Disenchantment with the CCP
No ruling party can mobilize the population if its policies serve the interests of a small elite and if it is perceived as corrupt and indifferent to the interests of the public. Indeed, the CCP’s strategy—maintaining an extensive patronage for its loyalists, co-opting new social elites, and excluding a large segment of Chinese society (mainly workers and peasants) from equally sharing the benefits of economic growth—has led to mass disenchantment with the party. Unavoidably, this strategy has tarnished the party’s image. A survey of 818 migrant rural laborers in Beijing in 1997-1998 found that 22 percent of the respondents thought the authority of local cadres in their homes was low and 41 percent said it was very low. About 60 percent also said that such authority had declined compared to a few years back. The prevailing image of the ruling party among the respondents was that of a self-serving elite. Only 5 percent of the interviewees thought their local cadres “work for the interests of the villagers and do not use their power for private gains,” and 60 percent said that their local cadres “only use their power for private gains and do not work for the interests of the villagers.” Eighty-five percent said that their village heads and CCP secretaries were corrupt. 108 Another survey of almost 15,000 rural residents in Zhengzhou, Henan province, in 2000 found that 39 percent thought the cadres were corrupt and phony, and 7 percent complained that local cadres were arbitrary and abusive.109
The party’s own research also found an elite that is increasingly out of touch with the public. A survey of 11,586 CCP members in Sichuan in 1999 showed that only 16 percent selected “ordinary people” as those they “contact the most often and closely in their daily work and lives,” while 36 percent selected “superiors and close colleagues.”110 Some members of the ruling elite also admitted the deterioration of the party’s image. A poll conducted among 673 CCP officials in northeastern Jilin province in 1998 found that 35 percent thought the status, role, and authority of party and government officials had declined.111 Obviously, the most persuasive evidence of mass disenchantment with the CCP is the growing conflict between the regime and Chinese society, as will be detailed in the following section.
Of all the factors responsible for the declining political vigor of the CCP, the most crucial one is, ironically, the absence of competition that would have forced the ruling party to redefine its missions, recruit members with genuine public appeal, and maintain its competitive edge through constant challenges. In understanding the root cause of the CCP’s declining mobilization capacity, it may be useful to draw an analogy with the behavior of corporate monopolies. Few monopolistic corporations have voluntarily given up their lucrative monopolies. Instead, they devote all their energy to prevent the emergence of competition. The same behavioral logic applies to political monopolies like the CCP. And like corporate monopolies that eventually succumb to the ills of inefficiency, political monopolies like the CCP, in the absence of competitive pressures from rival parties, will inevitably develop a full range of pathologies such as cynicism, patronage, organizational dystrophy, and unresponsiveness. One-party regimes can rarely take on new competitors when the political environment changes suddenly. The fall of monopolistic parties in the former Soviet bloc and in the developing world (Mexico and Taiwan, for example) shows that declining political mobilization capacity imperils the CCP’s long-term viability.
Rising Tensions Between the State and Society
An unavoidable consequence of declining state capacity