This course offers a conceptual framework for understanding China that highlights the intersection of politics and economics. It shows that rather than develop into a full blown market economy, state and party officials at all levels of the political system maintain significant influence in economic development. Such a “political” economy has had both positive and negative outcomes, which we will assess in detail. We also look at the origins, views, backgrounds and relations among leaders, and how those leaders make decisions about public policy and try to get those decisions implemented down through the system. China has few formal institutions through which citizens can participate in politics, but we will study the strategies Chinese people use to try to influence their leaders’ decisions. Finally, we assess China’s future and whether rapid economic development and the emergence of a vibrant middle class will push China towards greater democracy or whether the single party system is likely to survive into the future. The course is a quite useful background for Chinese Politics Part 2 – China and the World. Course Overview video: https://youtu.be/7FpNL67EbE4
3.6: Policy Implementation through Campaigns
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Del curso dictado por The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Chinese Politics Part 1 – China and Political Science
119 calificaciones
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
119 calificaciones
De la lección
Module 3: Policy Process in China
Conoce a los instructores
David ZweigChair Professor of the Division of Social Science and Director of Center on China’s Transnational Relations
[MUSIC]
Most policies are implemented through campaigns.
A campaign is a form of mobilization.
And for policy mobilization implementation.
And particularly under Mao.
But we still see this under Deng and in the Reform Era.
And I think Xi Jinping, the current leader,
is picking up on the use of campaigns.
Most policies are implemented through campaigns which mobilize society
to fulfill the policy goals as set out by the party.
Now these will involve saturation within the media
about the benefits of the policy, lots of propaganda, and
pressure upon the members of society to support the policy.
If it's a rural policy,
then work teams will go down to the villages to check to see that
the policy is being carried out under what is often called the three togethers.
Where peasants will, where leadership or local officials will come down and
work with the peasants, live with the peasants.
And they eat with the peasants and make sure that the policy is being done.
And this really put enormous pressure on citizens to fulfill the state targets and
implement the policy.
There wasn't really much room to manuever for them.
Now the documents would come down from the central government, or
the central party, level by level until they got down to the county.
And there the county officials would call a meeting.
Leaders from villages and from the townships,
call them into the county seat and read the documents to them.
Now this actually gave county officials an awful lot of leeway themselves,
because they could alter the content of the policy.
If there was something that they didn't like about it or
if it wasn't quite appropriate for the locality.
They could shift the policy somewhat.
Now, we can think about different kinds of campaigns.
We can think about economic campaigns.
We can think about political campaigns.
We can think about ideological, or mass indoctrination campaigns.
We see lots of those in China.
And this kind of mobilization, besides putting pressure on the citizens,
also put a lot of pressure on CCP members,
because they had to meet targets, or quotas.
And the failure to meet those quotas could really have a big impact on their careers.
Now, particularly with economic campaigns,
one of the strategies that the communist party has always used.
And it sort of borrows it somewhat from the past,
pre modern China, is to use models.
And these models would be put forward to encourage implementation
by showing the positive impact of a policy.
It would show, it would say things like so and so was doing this.
Isn't he good?
This is a positive thing you should want to be like this comrade and
behave in this positive way.
The problem though is that, many models and particularly if they were localities.
We're successful because the central government gave them some special
assistance, gave them extra money or gave them extra labor.
Things that may not have been made public at the time.
So they would get special benefits.
Or, if you were an early implementor, if there was some new kind of policy
opportunity and you moved quickly, your locality moved quickly.
You could get benefits that the later participants just could not gain.
And one of the examples of this, one of the cases I found very interesting.
I've written about this.
Was in 1988 the central government decided under the coastal developement strategy.
To push township and village enterprises,
the local rural factories, to get involved in exports.
And to persuade them to do this, there were articles in People's Daily,
articles in Peasant Daily.
All kinds of propaganda talking about certain villages who
implemented this policy, who got involved in exports, and they got rich.
And so people would hear about this.
Immediately, villages would try to follow the same kind of strategy.
But many of those villages actually lost a lot of money.
Because, there were already too many people producing the good, so
they couldn't export their product, or
they just didn't have any foreign markets at all.
And so there were reports later on of communities that went bankrupt
in trying to follow this campaign.
Political campaigns are somewhat different.
They can be quite nasty.
And what we find is that for a political campaign to take place,
there really are enemies that are targeted.
And those enemies can be dragged out and beaten, and arrested.
We see this with the anti corruption campaign.
And to a certain extent the CCP, the communist party would only select a few,
what we'd call, killing the chickens to scare the monkeys.
They'd only select a few people as the chickens.
Maybe beat them up, arrest them, lock them up in the hope that they would scare
everybody else to follow those policies.
But under Mao, if there was a policy that the leadership
wanted to carry out, and was worried that there would be opponents to it.
Or felt already that there were people who were opposing it.
What they often did was they would look for former class enemies,
the children of landlords, old landlords, the children of capitalists.
They would drag them out and they would become the chickens, right.
And they would get criticized, in some cases public meetings,
where they would be criticized, and people would be afraid
that if they didn't follow the policy, they too could become a chicken.
So they, as monkeys decided that they definitely would follow the policy.
Now, local officials could also use these political campaigns
to attack their opponents.
They would accuse them of resisting the policy.
Or being the source of opposition to the policy, even if they weren't guilty.
But this might be a chance, if there's some kind of factional division
within a village, the leadership, the family, the group.
The faction that was in charge could use that opportunity to go after
their opponents.
What complicated this even more was that when there were political campaigns,
the central leadership often gave out quotas.
So if it was an anti rightist campaign, they might say 5% of the people in
your village or 5% of the people in your factory, have to be found to be rightists.
And the local officials had no choice.
They had to arrest up to 5% of the people, and
innocent people would often get arrested in these kinds of situations.
Because the local officials wanted to fulfill their quota.
Because if you were an official who responded slowly to this
political campaign, you might be accused of being a rightist.
Of responding too slowly to the problem.
And that would be a really big difficulty for you.
And you might also be accused of having the wrong class standpoint.
And then you could just transition into being a class enemy.
And that would really mean the end of your career.
Now, campaigns often demanded a very high level of conformity.
They increased the likelihood of implementation.
But they also created great pressures on officials to carry out policies and
even policies that may have had negative consequences.
And the local officials may have even known that there was going
to be negative consequences.
But, they were afraid not to do the policy.
Now as I said before, policies were supposed to be adjustable,
right, to local conditions.
But if the policy was being implemented by campaign strategy.
Then it could lead to uniform implementation.
This idea of one cut of the knife.
Uniform, everybody has to do it.
And if an economic campaign became much more political, much more politicized.
Where the top leaders made that economic campaign into a priority.
Then again, it became much harder to resist.
And in my own work, the first book that I wrote.
I looked at agriculture policy during the culture revolution.
And what I found was pressure came down from the higher levels
of the government in the party.
To force peasants to take mountains and
build terraced fields and plant grain on the mountains.
Other places they took lakes and dried them up and
planted grain there to enhance food independence and food security.
And grain was then grown in all kinds of inappropriate places.
Even though local officials knew that it was not a good thing to do
because they wanted to play it safe.
And there is an old saying in China, sort of using Communist party language.
That it really is better to be on the left side, and to be
too enthusiastic for the revolution and to overdue policies.
Than to be on the right side, where you would be accused of not following policy.
Because then you might be accused of being a class enemy.
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