Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-18T11:11:32.678Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Xiism as a hegemonic project in the making: Sino-communist ideology and the political economy of China’s rise

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2019

Andreas Møller Mulvad Open the ORCID record for Andreas Møller Mulvad [Opens in a new window]
Andreas Møller Mulvad*
Affiliation:
Copenhagen Business School
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

How is Xi Jinping changing the course of China’s rise? Based on a Gramscian analytical framework inspired by Bob Jessop, this article provides an anatomy of Xiism (2012–) as an emergent hegemonic project, that is, a (fallible and contested) attempt by China’s party-based power bloc of altering global power balances in China’s favour while retaining domestic stability. Through juxtaposition with Maoism (1957–76) and Dengism (1978–2012), it is proposed that Xiism reformulates the power bloc’s strategy in three respects. First, the ideological vision of the ‘Chinese Dream’ negates Mao’s utopian-egalitarian universalism while readjusting Deng’s pro-market approach by emphasising ‘common prosperity’. Second, the economic accumulation strategy – built around the hyped Belt and Road Initiative – aims to reshape global trade and production patterns in a way that particularly benefits the state-owned sector, the Party leadership’s economic base. Third, Xi’s state project seeks to amalgamate Mao-style charismatic leadership and intra-party ‘self-rectification’ campaigns with both a Dengist commitment to political stability and traditional Chinese statecraft. The crucial issue for the coming decade is whether the Xi leadership will prove able to paper over the contradictions of this emergent ‘China Model’ and win support for it both at home and abroad.

Keywords

HegemonyChina’s RiseInternational Political EconomyIdeologyGramsciBob Jessop
Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , July 2019 , pp. 449 - 470
Copyright
© British International Studies Association 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Elizabeth Economy, ‘China’s imperial president: Xi Jinping tightens his grip’, Foreign Affairs, 93:6 (2014), pp. 80–91 Google Scholar ; Wo-Lap Lam, Willy, Chinese Politics in the Era of Xi Jinping: Renaissance, Reform, or Retrogression? (London: Routledge, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Brown, Kerry, CEO, China: The Rise of Xi Jinping (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

2 Following Joseph’s useful distinction between structural hegemony and (agent-driven) hegemonic projects, I focus here on the latter type ( Joseph, Jonathan, Hegemony: A Realist Analysis (London: Routledge, 2003)Google Scholar ). For a recent elaboration on this theoretical insight, see Pass, Jonathan, ‘Gramsci meets emergentist materialism: Towards a neo neo-gramscian perspective on world order’, Review of International Studies (2018), pp. 1–24 Google Scholar .

3 See Gow, Michael, ‘The core socialist values of the Chinese Dream: Towards a Chinese integral state’, Critical Asian Studies, 49:1 (2017), pp. 92–116 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Hui, E. S. I., ‘Putting the Chinese state in its place: a march from passive revolution to hegemony’, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 47:1 (2017), pp. 66–92 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

4 See Rucki, S. M., ‘Global economic crisis and China’s challenge to global hegemony: a neo-Gramscian approach’, New Political Science, 33:3 (2011), pp. 335–355 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Vermeiren, M. and Dierckx, S., ‘Challenging global neoliberalism? The global political economy of China’s capital controls’, Third World Quarterly, 33:9 (2012), pp. 1647–1668 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Van der Pijl, Kees, ‘Is the East still red? The contender state and class struggles in China’, Globalizations, 9:4 (2012), pp. 503–516 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Overbeek, Henk, ‘Sovereign wealth funds in the global political economy: the case of China’, in Henk Overbeek and Bastiaan van Apeldoorn (eds), Neoliberalism in Crisis (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 138–160 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

5 P. Chacko and K. Jayasuriya, ‘A capitalising foreign policy: Regulatory geographies and transnationalised state projects’, European Journal of International Relations (2017), available at: doi: 1354066117694702.

6 Mann, Michael, The Sources of Social Power, Vol. I: A History of Power from the Beginning to 1760 AD (New York and London: Cambridge University Press, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

7 For Xi as Maoist, see Lam, Chinese Politics in the Era of Xi Jinping; Zhao, Suisheng, ‘Xi Jinping’s Maoist revival’, Journal of Democracy, 27:3 (2016), pp. 83–97 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

For Xi as Dengist, see Alice Miller, ‘What would Deng do?’, China Leadership Monitor (14 February 2017).

8 See Chong, J. I., ‘Popular narratives versus Chinese history: Implications for understanding an emergent China’, European Journal of International Relations, 20:4 (2014), pp. 939–964 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Zhang, J., ‘China’s new foreign policy under Xi Jinping: Towards “Peaceful Rise 2.0”?’, Global Change, Peace & Security, 27:1 (2015), pp. 5–19 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

9 See Nölke, A., ten Brink, T., Claar, S., and May, C., ‘Domestic structures, foreign economic policies and global economic order: Implications from the rise of large emerging economies’, European Journal of International Relations, 21:3 (2015), pp. 538–567 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; McNally, C., ‘Rebalancing the economy, refurbishing the state: the political economic logic of Sino-Capitalism in contemporary China’, Revue de la regulation: Capitalisme, institutions, pouvoirs (2017), p. 21 Google Scholar .

10 Sum, Ngai-Ling and Jessop, Bob, Towards a Cultural Political Economy: Putting Culture in its Place in Political Economy (London: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ).

11 Jessop, Bob, Bonnett, Keith, Bromley, Simon, and Ling, Tom, Thatcherism: A Tale of Two Nations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988)Google Scholar .

12 These definitions are derived from Jessop, Bob, The State – Past, Present, and Future (London: Polity, 2016)Google Scholar . In applying this framework on China, I assume that power blocs in non-parliamentary settings have the incentive to seek consent from the general population, even if their hegemonic projects are not put to an electoral test.

13 Cited from Jessop et al., Thatcherism, p. 162.

14 Breslin, Shaun, China and the Global Political Economy (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

15 For seminal works in this tradition, see Cox, Robert W., ‘Gramsci, hegemony and international relations: an essay in method’, Millennium, 12:2 (1983), pp. 162–175 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Gill, Stephen, Gramsci, Historical Materialism and International Relations (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

16 Cited from Jessop, The State, p. 105.

17 Jessop, Bob and Sum, Ngai-Ling, ‘Towards a cultural international political economy: Poststructuralism and the Italian School’, in Marieke De Goede, (ed.), International Political Economy and Poststructural Politics (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 157–176 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

18 Cox, ‘Gramsci, hegemony and international relations’; Adam Bieler and Adam David Morton, ‘Theoretical and methodological challenges of neo-Gramscian perspectives in International Political Economy’, International Gramsci Society Online (January 2003), available at: {http://www.internationalgramscisociety.org/resources/online_articles/articles/bieler_morton.shtml} accessed 25 March 2018.

19 Recent scholarship has challenged received wisdom about Hua as a hapless proselyte of Mao who was unwilling to catalyse reforms. See Teiwes, Frederick C. and Sun, Warren, ‘China’s new economic policy under Hua Guofeng: Party consensus and party myths’, The China Journal, 66 (2011), pp. 1–23 CrossRefGoogle Scholar . Teiwes and Sun argue that the CCP’s narrative about Hua Guofeng as a ‘reckless leftist’ is in fact a ‘Dengist hagiography’, which has been accepted by most Western scholars.

20 The insights now being framed as Xiism and connected to the ostensible genius of one man are the result of the meticulous collective labour by the leadership of dealing with new societal trends. The shift does not reflect individual ideological proclivities of Xi, but rather a CCP leadership consensus gradually developed over nearly two decades.

21 See Dickson, Bruce J., Red Capitalists in China: The Party, Private Entrepreneurs, and Prospects for Political Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)Google Scholar .

22 See Holbig, Heike, ‘Remaking the CCP’s ideology: Determinants, progress, and limits under Hu Jintao’, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, 38:3 (2009), pp. 35–61 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

23 Cited from Stephen Roach, ‘China’s Contradictions’, China-US Focus (23 October 2017), available at: {https://www.chinausfocus.com/political-social-development/chinas-contradictions}.

24 See Naughton, Barry, ‘The new common economic program: China’s eleventh five-year plan and what it means’, China Leadership Monitor, 16 (2005), pp. 1–10 Google Scholar , available at: {http://media.hoover.org/sites/default/files/documents/clm16_bn.pdf} accessed 3 April 2018.

25 Paradise, James F., ‘China and international harmony: the role of Confucius Institutes in bolstering Beijing’s soft power’, Asian Survey, 49:4 (2009), pp. 647–669 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

26 See Zheng, Yongnian and Keat Tok, Sow, ‘Harmonious society and harmonious world: China’s policy discourse under Hu Jintao’, Briefing Series, 26 (2007)Google Scholar .

27 Schmalz, S. and Ebenau, M., ‘After neoliberalism? Brazil, India, and China in the global economic crisis’, Globalizations, 9:4 (2012), pp. 487–501 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

28 Godement, François, Contemporary China: Between Mao and Market (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), p. 5 Google Scholar .

29 See Meisner, Maurice, Mao Zedong: A Political and Intellectual Portrait (Cambridge, UK and Malden, MA: Polity, 2007)Google Scholar .

30 See Dirlik, Arif, ‘Mao Zedong and “Chinese Marxism”’, in Saree Makdisi, Cesare Casarino, and Rebecca Karl (eds), Marxism Beyond Marxism (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 119–148 (p. 128)Google Scholar .

31 Cited from Jessop, The State, p. 87.

32 Ibid.

33 Cited from Alice Miller, ‘Hu Jintao and the Sixth Plenum’, China Leadership Monitor, 20 (winter 2017), available at: {http://media.hoover.org/sites/default/files/documents/clm20am.pdf} accessed 30 June 2018.

34 Cited from Xi, Jinping, The Governance of China (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2014), p. 38 Google Scholar .

35 Cited from Jinping Xi, ‘Speech at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China’ (18 October 2017), available at: http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/download/Xi_Jinping's_report_at_19th_CPC_National_Congress.pdf} accessed 8 April 2018.

36 For a discussion of the importance of the principal contradiction in CCP ideology, see Von Senger, H., Einführung in das chinesische Recht (Berlin: Beck, 1994)Google Scholar .

37 Here I build on Gow’s (‘The core socialist values of the Chinese Dream’) insightful analysis.

38 Ibid., p. 109.

39 Cited from Jinping Xi, ‘President Xi’s Speech to Davos in Full’, available at: {https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/full-text-of-xi-jinping-keynote-at-the-world-economic-forum} accessed 8 April 2018.

40 Ibid.

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid.

43 Gray, John, ‘The economics of Maoism’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 25:2 (1969), pp. 42–51 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

44 Hoffman, C., ‘The Maoist economic model’, Journal of Economic Issues, 5:3 (1971), pp. 12–27 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

45 Guillermaz, Jacques, The Chinese Communist Party in Power, 1949–1976 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1976), pp. 77–98 Google Scholar .

46 Although the campaign itself ended in 1961 its defining objective of economic independence from the imperialist world system lingered for at least another decade.

47 Kapur, H. (ed.), The End of an Isolation: China After Mao (Dordrecht, Boston, Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1985), p. 241 Google Scholar .

48 Cited from Baum, Richard, Burying Mao: Chinese Politics in the Age of Deng Xiaoping (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. xii Google Scholar .

49 See Deng, Xiaopeng, Build Socialism with Chinese Characteristics (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1985)Google Scholar .

50 For a state media rendering of ‘New Normal’ theory, see Xinhua, ‘Xi’s ‘New Normal’ Theory’ (9 November 2014), available at: {http://www.china.org.cn/world/2014-11/10/content_34012582.htm} accessed 30 June 2018.

51 The most systematic statement of the industrial policy aspect is the ‘Made in China 2025’ plan issued by the State Council in May 2015. See Li, Ling, ‘China’s manufacturing locus in 2025: With a comparison of “Made-in-China 2025” and “Industry 4.0”’, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 135 (2018), pp. 66–74 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

52 See Ferdinand, Peter, ‘Westward ho – the China dream and “one belt, one road”: Chinese foreign policy under Xi Jinping’, International Affairs, 92:4 (2016), pp. 941–957 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Wang, Y., ‘Offensive for defensive: the Belt and Road Initiative and China’s new grand strategy’, The Pacific Review, 29:3 (2016), pp. 455–463 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Blanchard, J. M. F. and Flint, C., ‘The geopolitics of China’s maritime silk road initiative’, Geopolitics, 22:2 (2017), pp. 223–245 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

53 See Heilmann, S., Rudolf, M., Huotari, M., and Buckow, J., ‘China’s shadow foreign policy: Parallel structures challenge the established international order’, MERICS China Monitor, 18 (28 October 2014)Google Scholar .

54 Ibid.

55 Ibid.

56 See J. Eisenman and D. T. Stewart, ‘China’s new Silk Road is getting muddy’, Foreign Policy (9 January 2017), available at: {https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/01/09/chinas-new-silk-road-is-getting-muddy/} accessed 29 June 2018.

57 Heilmann et al., ‘China’s shadow foreign policy’, p. 1.

58 Ibid.

59 Pietersee, Jan Nederveen, ‘China’s contingencies and globalization’, Third World Quarterly, 36:11 (2015), pp. 1985–2001 Google Scholar .

60 See Meisner, Mao Zedong.

61 See Leese, Daniel, Mao Cult: Rhetoric and Ritual in China’s Cultural Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar . Importantly, Maoism as hegemonic project did not develop synchronically across the three dimensions. Whereas a distinctly Maoist hegemonic vision and accumulation strategy was articulated from the late 1950s, it was only with the launch of the GCPR that Mao’s attention shifted to revolutionising the functioning of the party-state.

62 See Vogel, Ezra, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011), pp. 377–393 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

63 Guillermaz, The Chinese Communist Party in Power, 1949–1976, pp. 258–9, 511–17) argues that China’s stance was particularly belligerent from 1958–66, followed by a more defensive strategy of counterbalancing the two superpowers – with rapprochement with the US as a crucial element – from the early 1970s.

64 Xi, The Governance of China.

65 Cited from Weber, Max, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, eds Guentor Roth and Claus Wittich, 2 vols (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), p. 215 Google Scholar .

66 Cited from Xi, The Governance of China, p. 479.

67 For a useful cross-sectoral overview, see Heilmann, Sebastian and Stepan, Matthias (eds), China’s Core Executive, Mercator Institute for China Studies, No. 1 (June 2016)Google Scholar .

68 See Brødsgaard, Kjeld Erik, ‘China’s political order under Xi Jinping: Concepts and perspectives’, China: An International Journal, 16:3 (2018), pp. 1–17 Google Scholar .

69 Jaros, Kyle and Pan, Jennifer, ‘China’s newsmakers: Official media coverage and political shifts in the Xi Jinping era’, The China Quarterly, 233 (2018), pp. 111–136 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

70 Zhang, Shaoying and McGhee, Derek, China’s Ethical Revolution and Regaining Legitimacy: Reforming the Communist Party through Its Public Servants (New York: Springer, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

71 For an in-depth critical discussion of the anti-corruption campaign, see Wedeman, Andrew, ‘Xi Jinping’s tiger hunt: Anti-corruption campaign or factional purge?’, Modern China Studies, 24:2 (2017)Google Scholar .

72 See Zhang and McGhee, China’s Ethical Revolution and Regaining Legitimacy.

73 Chen, X., ‘Remaking the loyal cadres: the Ideological Responsibility System in China’s new era’, Journal of Chinese Governance, 3:3 (2018), pp. 292–306 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

74 See Sørensen, Camilla T., ‘The significance of Xi Jinping’s “Chinese Dream” for Chinese foreign policy: From “Tao Guang Yang Hui” to “Fen Fa You Wei”’, Journal of China and International Relations, 3:1 (2015)Google Scholar . As noted, this new orientation did not emerge ex nihilo with Xi, but was already underway during Hu Jintao’s term.

75 Chacko and Jayasuirya, ‘A capitalising foreign policy’.

76 See Croissant, Aurel, ‘Cambodia in 2017: Descending into dictatorship?’, Asian Survey, 58:1 (2018), pp. 194–200 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

77 Rodrik, Dani, The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011)Google Scholar .

78 For a strategic perspective on the prospects for Hong Kong by a leader of the democracy movement, see Tai, Benny Y. T., ‘From past to future: Hong Kong’s democratic movement’, in Wai-man Lam and Luke Cooper (eds), Citizenship, Identity and Social Movements in the New Hong Kong (London: Routledge, 2017), pp. 159–180 Google Scholar .

79 Zenz, Adrian, ‘“Thoroughly reforming them towards a healthy heart attitude”: China’s political re-education campaign in Xinjiang’, Central Asian Survey (2018), pp. 1–27 Google Scholar .