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and determination of the winners of these honors and perks. The criteria for the awardees were often explicitly political. A typical example was a program to pick outstanding social scientists. In April 1997, the State Education Commission issued a circular on “training outstanding social science talents for the new century.” Under this program, the government would award such titles to thirty academics each year for five years. Among the listed qualifications were “high political caliber, support for the CCP, love of the socialist mother-land, outstanding academic achievements, and under 45.” Most awardees were scholars in higher education institutions. The heads of the government’s bureau of higher education would be the judges for the selection process. The winners would receive 100,000 yuan each in research support. 167 There were other similar administratively granted awards and perks for the intelligentsia. For example, as of 2004, 5,206 individuals were recognized as “middle-aged and young experts who have made outstanding contributions” (an honor that came with unspecified material benefits). Nationwide, 145,000 experts, or about 8 percent of the senior professionals, were receiving special government stipends in 2004.168

Besides recruiting and co-opting individual social elites, the party also tried to co-opt new social organizations. In 1998, the COD and the Ministry of Civil Affairs issued a joint document, “Guanyu zai shehui tuanti zhong jianli dang zuzhi youguan wenti de tongzhi” (A Circular on the Issue of Establishing Party Organizations Inside Civic Groups). To implement this program, Shanghai’s party organization established party cells in NGOs and increased the party’s penetration and influence in NGOs. The party also set up liaison offices in neighborhood committees. These offices received money from local governments and became the framework upon which civic groups could be built. The party placed 11,000 members in the three nominally private business groups, Shanghai Geti Laodongzhe Xiehui (Individual Entrepreneurs Association) and Shanghai Siying Qiye Xiehui (Association of Private Firms).169

The Co-optation of Private Entrepreneurs

The emergence of private entrepreneurs was initially viewed by the CCP with ambivalence, if not suspicion. In 1995, for example, a deputy minister of the COD publicly affirmed the party’s official policy of not admitting private entrepreneurs into the party, even though some of them had been recruited by local officials.170 Until Jiang Zemin promulgated his theory of the “Three Represents” and made the ideological case for recruiting private entrepreneurs into the party in 2001, the political status of private entrepreneurs remained in limbo.171 But it would be a mistake to conclude, from an apparently inconsistent official policy, that the party had done nothing to turn the emerging private entrepreneurs into their supporters. The party tried to control this group of new social elites both through organizational penetration and individual recruitment.

The party’s efforts to establish CCP cells in private firms were largely unsuccessful.172 But the party’s other efforts yielded, by comparison, more results. For example, Bruce Dickson’s research on the party’s attempts to reach out to business groups formed by private entrepreneurs showed that the CCP had established extensive links with business groups, such as Gongshanglian (The Industrial and Commercial Federation) to which nearly 80 percent of the owners of private firms belonged in 2002.173 Although the official ban against admitting private entrepreneurs into the party was not formally lifted until 2001, the party not only made no attempt to expel those CCP members who had become private entrepreneurs, but also appeared to have carried out a systematic plan to recruit private entrepreneurs into the People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

From 1997 to 2002, more than 9,000 private businessmen were selected to be delegates to local people’s congresses at and above