The Modern Chinese State (Cambridge Modern China Series)

The Modern Chinese State The Modern Chinese State is the first book to examine systematically the evolution of the Chinese state from the late Ming dynasty, through the Nationalist and Communist party-states of the twentieth century, and into the twenty-first century. The contributing authors, all leading scholars in the field of Chinese studies, carefully assess the internal organization of the Chinese state over time, the ruling parties that have governed it, the foreign and indigenous systems that have served as models for state-building and political development, and the array of concepts that have guided Chinese thinking about the state. The Chinese state is the oldest in the world, far predating European and other Oriental state systems, but the party-states in mainland China and Taiwan today both face serious challenges. What are these challenges and can they be surmounted? How are the Chinese adapting? What will the Chinese state of the twenty-first century look like? These contemporary and many more historical questions are explored in this book. David Shambaugh is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs and Director of the China Policy Program at The George Washington University, and nonresident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at The Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.

Cambridge Modern China Series Edited by William Kirby, Harvard University

Other books in the series Warren I. Cohen and Li Zhao, eds., Hong Kong Under Chinese Rule: The Economic and Political Implications of Reversion Tamara Jacka, Women's Work in Rural China: Change and Continuity in an Era of Reform Shiping Zheng, Party vs. State in Post-1949 China: The Institutional Dilemma Edward S. Steinfeld, Forging Reform in China: The Fate of State-Owned Industry Michael Dutton, Streetlife China Jing Huang, Factionalism in Chinese Communist Politics Edmund Fung, In Search of Chinese Democracy

Other books by David Shambaugh Reforming China's Military The China Reader: The Reform Era (coedited with Orville Schell) China's Military Faces the Future (coedited with James Lilley) Is China Unstable? (edited) Contemporary Taiwan (edited) China's Military in Transition (edited) China and Europe, 1949-1995 Deng Xiaoping: Portrait of a Chinese Statesman (edited) Greater China: The Next Superpower? (edited) Chinese Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice (coedited with Thomas W. Robinson) American Studies of Contemporary China (edited) Beautiful Imperialist: China Perceives America, 1972-1990 The Making of a Premier: Zhao Ziyang's Provincial Career

The Modern Chinese State Edited by

DAVID SHAMBAUGH The George Washington University

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia Ruiz de Alarcon 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain www. Cambridge. org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521772341 © David Shambaugh 2000 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2000 Typeface Times Roman 10/13 pt.

System Quark [BTS]

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data The modern Chinese State / edited by David Shambaugh p. cm. - (Cambridge modern China series) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-521-77234-6 (hardback) - ISBN 0-521-77603-1 (pbk.) 1. China - Politics and government - 1644-1912. 2. China - Politics and government - 20th century. I. Shambaugh, David L. II. Series. JQ1510.M66 2000 320.451W04 - dc21 99-053435 ISBN-13 978-0-521-77234-1 hardback ISBN-10 0-521-77234-6 hardback ISBN-13 978-0-521-77603-5 paperback ISBN-10 0-521-77603-1 paperback Transferred to digital printing 2005

In memory of Professor Franz Michael: Scholar, Advocate, and Gentleman

Contents

List of Contributors List of Illustrations List of Abbreviations Preface

page xiii xvii xix xxi

Introduction: The Evolving and Eclectic Modern Chinese State David Shambaugh 1 2 3

4 5 6

7

1

The Late Imperial Chinese State H. Lyman Miller

15

The Chinese State during the Republican Era Ramon H. Myers

42

The Evolution of the State in the Republic of China on Taiwan Bruce J. Dickson

73

The Chinese State during the Maoist Era Frederick C. Teiwes

105

The Chinese State in the Post-Mao Era David Shambaugh

161

The Chinese Communist Economic State in Comparative Perspective Jan Prybyla

188

The Future of the Chinese State Harvey Nelsen

216

Index

237 XI

List of Contributors

Bruce J. Dickson is Director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the East Asian Studies Program in the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University and Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs. His research and teaching focus on the domestic politics of China and Taiwan. His recent publications include Democratization in China and Taiwan: The Adaptability of Leninist Parties (1997), "China's Democratization and the Taiwan Experience," Asian Survey (April 1998), and "Unsettled Succession: China's Critical Moment," National Interest (Fall 1997). He is also associate editor of the journal Problems of Post-Communism. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan. H. Lyman Miller is Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and teaches at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He taught for many years at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies and in the political science department at Johns Hopkins University. Prior to that he served as an analyst in the U.S. government. He is author of numerous articles on modern China, as well as Science and Dissent in Post-Mao China (1996). Ramon H. Myers has authored, coauthored, and edited twenty books, as well as written essays which have appeared in thirty-two edited works. He is currently the Curator-Scholar of the East Asian Collection and Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University. His most recently published work, coauthored with Linda Chao, is The First Chinese Democracy: Political Life in the Republic of China (1998). Harvey Nelsen is Professor in the Department of Government and International Affairs at the University of South Florida. His book-length xni

List of Contributors

studies have dealt with civil-military relations in China and Chinese foreign policy. He has just begun a comparative study of religions in light of the absence of religious wars in Chinese history. His publications include The Chinese Military System (1981) and Power and Insecurity: Beijing, Moscow and Washington 1949-89 (1989). Jan Prybyla is Professor Emeritus of Economics at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of The Political Economy of Communist China (1970), The Chinese Economy: Problems and Policies (1978,1981), Issues in Socialist Economic Modernization (1981), Market and Plan under Socialism: The Bird in the Cage (1987), and Reform in China and Other Socialist Economies (1990); coauthor of China and the Crisis of Marxism-Leninism (1990), and coauthor and coeditor of Russia and China on the Eve of a New Millennium (1997). He has taught comparative economic systems at Nankai University, Tianjin, China, in 1987-88, and was a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of International Relations, National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan, in 1989. He is currently working on a book, China's Two Decades of Economic Reform: Methods, Achievements, Problems. He lives in Tucson, Arizona. David Shambaugh is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs and Director of the China Policy Program at the Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University. He is also a nonresident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at The Brookings Institution. He has published widely on Chinese politics, foreign relations, security and defense issues, and international relations of the Asia-Pacific region. He has published four books, edited seven others, and served as editor of the China Quarterly from 1991 to 1996. He is active in a number of professional organizations and learned societies and associations. Frederick C. Teiwes received a B.A. from Amherst College and a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University. He subsequently taught and conducted research at Cornell University, the Australian National University, and, since 1976, at the University of Sydney where he currently holds a Personal Chair in Chinese Politics. He is the author of a number of books on Chinese elite politics including Politics and Purges in China (1979, 1993), Leadership, Legitimacy, and Conflict in China (1984), and Politics at Mao's Court (1990). In recent years he has collaborated with Warren Sun on further studies of Chinese leadership

xiv

List of Contributors politics, notably, The Politics of Agricultural Cooperativization in China (1993), The Formation of the Maoist Leadership (1994), The Tragedy of Lin Biao (1996), and, most recently, China's Road to Disaster (1999).

xv

List of Illustrations

Figure 2.1 The Northern State, 1912-1928 Figure 2.2 Structure of the Nationalist Government, 1928-1937 Figure 2.3 The State Administrative Structure, 1937-1945 Figure 5.1 The Chinese State in 2000

XVII

page 48 56 67 169

List of Abbreviations

CCP CMC CPPCC DPP FFYP GED GMD MAC NGO NPC NSC PAP PLA PRC ROC SPC TFYP TVE

Chinese Communist Party Central Military Commission Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference Democratic Progressive Party First Five-Year Plan General Equipment Department Guomindang Military Affairs Committee nongovernmental organization National People's Congress National Security Council People's Armed Police People's Liberation Army People's Republic of China Republic of China State Planning Commission Third Five-Year Plan township and village enterprise

xix

Preface

This volume owes a debt of gratitude to many. Most of all it owes a special intellectual debt to the memory of Franz Michael (1907-1992), to whom the volume is admiringly dedicated. Most of the contributors to this volume were either colleagues or students of Professor Michael. Personally, as an undergraduate, he was one of my first teachers of Asian history. He did much to shape my initial understanding of China and Asian civilizations, and he particularly challenged me, as a young liberal, to see how easy it was for unbridled state power to be used in despotic ways. Professor Michael was one of the first Asian scholars to apply the totalitarian paradigm (developed to understand modern fascism and Stalinist communism) to the study of Chinese communism, as he recognized that dictatorships knew no cultural boundaries. This recognition also grew out of his understanding (and debates with Karl Wittfogel) of "Oriental Despotism." His own European heritage and study of Asia blended intellectually in Professor Michael's critical mind.1 Franz Michael's impact on the field of Sinological studies was significant. His influence endures in the number of students that he trained in thirty-five years as a professor of history at the University of Washington, George Washington University, and University of Pittsburgh - many of whom pursued careers as China scholars. He also taught large numbers of students who would enter government service and other pursuits in international affairs. However, through his daunting number of articles and books, Franz's scholarly impact reached beyond those in his classroom. His three-volume The Taiping Rebellion is still considered the classic work on the subject. Franz also believed in public education and 1

See Marie-Luise Nath, "In Memoriam: Franz Michael (1907-1992)," The China Quarterly, No. 138 (June 1994), pp. 513-16. xxi

Preface

policy - teaching continuing education courses at the Smithsonian Institution and leading tours to China, testifying before Congress and writing policy papers, and lobbying many in the media. Franz's passion for China was, perhaps, exceeded only by his enjoyment of bird watching and sports car driving. Franz Michael's own academic training was completed in Germany between the wars. He completed his doctorate with the highest honors at the University of Freiburg in 1933. That year, as the Nazis began their rise to power and anti-Semitism began to spread, Franz abandoned a promising Foreign Office career and went into self-imposed exile in China. After five years teaching German in Hangzhou and traveling throughout the countryside not occupied by the advancing Japanese forces, he accepted a fellowship at Johns Hopkins University and moved to the United States - which would become his adopted home for the remainder of his life. Throughout his distinguished academic career, Professor Michael was a passionate proponent of the view that one could not understand China unless one understood its bureaucracy and ways in which the state apparat evolved over time and in response to economic and social stimuli. For him, there were two key aspects to China: the gentry and the bureaucracy; together they comprised the Chinese state. Thus the contributors to this volume, and Franz's former colleagues at The George Washington University involved in this project, thought it appropriate that his contributions to the China field be commemorated by commissioning a volume on the modern Chinese state. The conference that gave rise to this volume was a joint venture between the Institute of Russian, European, and Eurasian Studies (IREES) and the Sigur Center for Asian Studies at The George Washington University. Franz's close colleague Carl Linden must be credited with initiating the idea of a posthumous commemorative volume, and Carl, IREES director James Millar, and I worked closely together in planning the conference. Suzanne Stephenson and Deborah Toy did yeoman's service with all of the complicated logistics. The meeting in October 1998 brought together many of Franz's former students and colleagues, as well as his widow Dolores and daughters, all of whom enjoyed reminiscing about Franz and the former Institute of Sino-Soviet Studies at The George Washington University. A deep debt of thanks is also due to the contributors, who demonstrated great patience as this volume morphed from a set of conference papers into a scholarly volume. Unfortunately, not all of the papers origxxn

Preface

inally presented at the conference could be included in the volume, but I am still most grateful to all of the original authors for the time and effort expended. Like all edited volumes, the chapters were rewritten several times to take account of suggestions and criticisms from those at the conference and outside peer reviewers for Cambridge University Press. Working with Cambridge University Press has been a real pleasure, particularly with social science commissioning editor Mary J. Child, series editor Professor William Kirby, and copy editor Stephanie Sakson. The book tries to tackle a big subject and a long expanse of time. Hopefully, it includes some big ideas too, and tries to offer both new students and informed readers an adequate and accurate introduction to the complexities of the Chinese state over the last couple of centuries. As the Chinese state enters its twenty-sixth millennium of organized rule, faced with substantial challenges and abiding questions about its efficacy, pundits may do well to consider its evolution along a longer continuum. This volume should help to fill that need. David Shambaugh Washington, D.C. May 1999

xxin

Introduction: The Evolving and Eclectic Modern Chinese State DAVID SHAMBAUGH

r

T"iHERE are few issues that have interested China scholars over the A years as the evolution of the Chinese state.1 As the following chapters illustrate, the Chinese state in the modern era has been a particularly dynamic entity. While it has evolved, the Chinese state has shed and absorbed a variety of organizational and normative features - becoming, over time, an eclectic amalgam. CHINA'S ECLECTIC STATE

Unlike many Western polities that have evolved over the same period of time generally within a singular liberal paradigm, the modern Chinese state has undergone several macro transitions: from imperial to republican to revolutionary communist to modernizing socialist and, in Taiwan, to democratic phases. While radically different in its basic ethos and organizational structure in each phase (monarchical-republican-Leninistliberal), the Chinese state on the mainland has had three enduring missions: modernization of the economy, transformation of society, and defense of the nation against foreign aggression. The intended goals of social transformation varied (from neo-Confucianist to neofascist to radical Maoism to pragmatic Dengism), but for more than a century these have been the central and consistent missions of the Chinese state regardless of their fundamentally different cast. As one evolved to the next, some elements of the past survived each transition and were woven 1

Recently, for example, see the masterful study by R. Bin Wong, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997).

David Shambaugh

into new institutional frameworks. Each new departure was never total, although all were sharp and each sought to "overthrow" and replace the former. In reality, though, each new Chinese state maintained certain features of the old. Moreover, in each phase, different foreign elements were imported and grafted on to the evolving indigenous root, creating an ever-more complex hybrid. This eclectic state is apparent from examining the evolving tables of organization of successive Chinese states, but is particularly evident when one speaks with bureaucrats and officials of different government ministries, different components of the military and security apparat, and educational institutions. In interviewing Chinese officials, bureaucrats, and cadres on the Chinese mainland and Taiwan today, one encounters distinct institutional identities, which seem to derive, at least in part, from the different foreign nations that served as "models" of administrative development and trained officials accordingly. These organizational identities exist apart from bureaucratic missions and "turf," as they help to form a kind of "inner ethos" within different state organs - thus giving rise to multiple, coexistent, and competitive subidentities within the eclectic modern "Chinese state." As the Chinese state evolved over time and took on different missions, it varied in size, scope, and organizational complexity. The ensuing chapters in this volume elaborate this in great detail. The late imperial state, from the late Ming dynasty through the "High Qing" period, expanded constantly to manage the ever-growing state monopolies over key commodities, irrigation and agriculture, local taxation, and management of commercial and diplomatic interactions with foreign "barbarians" as well as those in the "Sinic zone" of the "tributary system." Late Qing efforts at military modernization, the policy of building "shipyards and arsenals," also spawned new industrial structures and bureaucracies. By the time of its collapse, the imperial Chinese state was a sprawling and unwieldy set of bureaucracies (one might say that it collapsed under its own weight). The early republican government, after the revolution of 1911 (Xinhai Geming), produced a more circumscribed state apparatus, although it never fully took shape and soon was limited to a finite sphere of activity as warlords dominated and administered different sections of China. When the Nationalist state finally eliminated warlordism and constituted a new government in Nanjing in 1928, the Chinese state had shrunk and been functionally redefined from its imperial predecessors. The Nanjing Government was an eclectic mix of some late imperial organs, but it also drew on a range of foreign institutional models: Japanese, German, British, Soviet,

Introduction

and American.2 Despite these reforms, the "reach of the state" remained geographically and functionally limited; the rule of law did not underpin government activity; while a variety of neofascist paramilitary thugs, secret police, and gangs coerced the populace to comply with supposed government edicts. After the Japanese invasion, the Nationalist state, as a functioning national entity, collapsed for all ostensible purposes. With the victory of the Chinese Communists in 1949, the state began to grow again. While retaining some elements of the imperial and Nationalist organizational structure, it essentially morphed into a cloned version of the "High Stalinist" Soviet communist state. This produced a variety of new structural and functional hierarchies. Mao's various attempts at social engineering and transformation also contributed to the growth of the party-state, particularly at the local level.3 With the post-Great Leap economic reforms of the early 1960s, the state and its purview grew further - which had much to do with Mao's attempts to attack and reduce it during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). With post-Mao economic, scientific, and military reforms under Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese state was reconfigured and grew in size yet again, although its scope of activity was reduced. By the 1980s, however, the size of government had become an impediment to economic, scientific, and military modernization. As a result, the government undertook four successive waves of retrenchment, downsizing, and streamlining (1982, 1988, 1993, 1998) in attempts to improve efficiency and economies of scale. Still, the Chinese state today remains a sprawling set of functional and territorial bureaucracies, and possesses the largest number of bureaucrats of any government in the world. THEMES

The contributors to this volume trace this historical evolution of successive Chinese states, and ably capture the complexities of each distinct phase. In the process, vast amounts of information are distilled for the reader. H. Lyman Miller begins (Chapter 1) with an overview assessment of the late imperial state, from the mid-sixteenth century to the 1911 Revo2 3

This is recognized, for example, by Julia Strauss in her Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: State Building in Republican China, 1927-1940 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). See Timothy Cheek and Tony Saich, eds., New Perspectives on State Socialism in China, 1949-1965 (Armonk, N.Y.: ME. Sharpe, 1997).

David Shambaugh

lution. He sets forth a number of themes and identifies several components of the modern Chinese state that are seen in subsequent chapters. Students and scholars of twentieth-century Chinese states will be struck by the numerous continuities with China's ancien regime. Despite the twin revolutions of the twentieth century (1911 and 1949) and the reinvention of the Nationalist state on Taiwan after 1949, Miller's chapter is a refreshing reminder that, organizationally and behaviorally, the Ming and Qing state practices presaged their twentieth-century counterparts. Consider the following examples noted in Chapter 1. The legitimization of the late-imperial state was the product of, among other things, a moralistic ideology (neo-Confucianism), which was propagated through a variety of state organs. Concomitantly, the educational system was highly elitist and a tool for propagating and inculcating the official cant in the educated literati who staffed the state - who, in turn, were co-opted and patronized by central and local elites. With neoConfucian orthodoxy the ethical-moral basis of rule, there was a natural ritualistic basis of state authority. Regime change in such a system was thus precipitated more by the perceived loss of moral authority (the "Mandate of Heaven") than as the result of the incompetence of rulers or their unpopular policies. Needless to say, there was no routinized process of elite turnover or regime change. Miller notes the longstanding, and chronic, Chinese inability to manage what nowadays is called leadership succession. In traditional China, as today, leaders stay in office until they become incapacitated, die, or are overthrown by rivals. He further calls attention to the endemic maneuvering for power among the elite in the imperial court, eunuchs, and members of the emperor's clan. It is important that Miller's chapter also delineates how the Chinese state was structured and ruled over the millennia, and how imperial China established a "modern" state structure long before the West. The precursor of the centralized administrative system established in France under Louis XIV had existed in a highly complex and functional form in China at least since the Song dynasty - indeed, as noted by French historian Jacques Gernet, the totality of imperial Chinese state control over the population, economy, and military far exceeded that of the embryonic modern European state.4 While reaching its zenith in the Song and 4

Jacques Gernet, "Introduction," in Stuart R. Schram, e