The first step in the CCP's efforts to
improve its governance, was that it
realized it had to modernize itself. It
would not be good enough to simply add
new policy items on their policy agenda
if they didn't have the means to
implement it. And this was the problem
that the CCP had in the end of the 90s.
They were burdened by an antiquated
ideology that was riddled with
contradictions and full of these Maoist
cliches that was really confusing and
demoralizing, I would think to a lot of
CCP members. The organizational structure
was also outdated. The heavy focus on
secret party cells was starting even
then to become problematic because it
encouraged abuse of authority and
corruption. And in addition the
level of expertise and knowledge among
the party members was very low, was not
sufficient to carry out the kind of
policies that the CCP wanted. They needed
a cadre core that was educated in the
modern sciences of, how do you how do you
manage social policy, how do you manage
very technical issues about economics.
And then again in the international
arena they needed more sophisticated
thinkers and officials who knew how to
deal with foreign policy. Starting around
2002 really, I think the key
date, the 16th party congress adopted this
new governing party paradigm. And this
came out largely as a result of years of
effort by Jiang Zemen and the leadership
at that time, to push through what was
then known as the Three Represents. And
this concept provided ideological cover
for this shift, this paradigm shift.
And especially the Third Represent which
which says that the CCP now needs to
represent the fundamental interests of
the masses. That is really the statement
for the CCP taking on this governing party
role. And so that was a very key decision
when the when the CCP adopted the Three
Represents is part of the guiding
ideology, it showed that the CCP
leadership endorsed this vision. The
pursuit of this paradigm has been
extremely energy intensive and it's
very difficult for the party. It is again
by the CCP's own reckoning this is the
first paradigm shift since 1921. It's very significant and the
demands being called for are enormous.
When you think about where the party was
in the 90s, I mean Deng Xiaoping was
still fighting leftists and there's still
very powerful voices arguing for a return
to Maoist thought and politics. And we
see the vision of what the party
realized they needed to, where they need
to be at to carry out this new policy
agenda. It's a huge huge gulf. Also part
of this process has been a strengthening
of the central party bureaucracy. Again
is a really key development that we see
flowering under Xi Jinping. It's
important to note that this, what we're
seeing under Xi, is really the
culmination of trends that began under
Hu with this paradigm shift under Hu
you saw the strengthening of several key
central party units, like the central
party school, the central party research
office, the general office. Numerous
organizations like these began to take
on more responsibilities in mentoring or
providing briefings to the Politburo
and taking on the drafting role and the
work of developing lot of these
documents, its regulations, its ideology.
All that was done at a central
party bureaucracy so they've played a
critical role in enabling a lot of these
changes and under Xi they're playing an
even bigger role through all these small
small groups that Xi has built. Jiang
Zemin himself said and you read the 2002 16th party congress report there was
a call for the party to start moving
towards a rule-based system and the
first step for that was for the party to
start implementing a rule-based
governing system inside itself. Which is
what you saw a lot of activity focused
on, was issuing these rules and
regulations about how do you do
decision-making, how you standardize
inside the party voting processes and
appraisals and things like that. So that
was really I think the first step for
the party to try to carry out this
movement towards a more rule-based
system of - law based system of rule. The
reason why it's so essential for the
party to carry this out,
is it is indeed I think a life-and-death
struggle. If the party cannot make this
change, it will continue to lose
support. It will continue to suffer
problems of massive corruption and the
problem of the corruption is that
increasingly it's damaging economic
development and growth. Unlike in the
previous eras where I think the party
senior lead measured or weighed
corruption at the local level with the
staggering economic growth and tended to tolerate corruption for the sake
of maintaining high growth rates, well
that option is gone now. The only way
that they're going to sustain long-term
growth is they have to to improve the
efficiency of the economy. Carry out this
rebalancing. Find a way to get these
officially do their jobs and to make
again more technically complex policy
decisions about you know how they invest
and what kind of services that
they're going to build up. Versus just
building more factories. There's two
points that I would like to underscore
when we think about all these issues.
First off my view, it is very difficult
to understand what is going on in
Beijing today and what is going on with
the Xi administration if you don't
understand this paradigm shift. Hu
Jintao set up Xi Jinping to do what
Xi Jinping is doing. If it were not for
what Hu Jintao and the central
leadership was doing throughout the
2000s Xi would not be positioned to
start executing all these policies and
changes that he's doing right now. So you
need to understand this paradigm shift
in order to understand what is going on
in Beijing today. Second point I would like to 
underscore is the importance for students
of Chinese politics of understanding
some of the basics of their political
system, the ideology, the terms that they use,
the planning process, the whole method of
all these various types of meetings and
the study of how all these documents
come together and how they relate to
each other. There is a system,
there's a process and I hoped through my
book to contribute to a refocusing and
better understanding of a lot of these
very critical fundamental elements of
the Chinese political system.
you
