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Communism and Clientelism: Rural Politics in China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Jean C. Oi
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Despite its widespread currency in political science, the concept of clientelism has rarely found its way into the literature on communist systems. Students of communist politics regularly note the importance of personal ties, and many recognize the significance of informal bonds in economic and political spheres at all levels of society. Some even apply the term “clientelism” to the political behavior they describe. Yet these studies are generally limited to elite-level politics, to factionalism, career mobility, recruitment patterns, and attainment of office at the top- to middle-level echelons of the bureaucracy.2 Few have considered clientelism as a type of elite-mass linkage through which the state and the party exercise control at the local level, and through which individuals participate in the political system.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , January 1985 , pp. 238 - 266
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1985

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References

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3 The “totalitarian” model encompasses a number of variations. The major elements presented here are based on Friedrich and Brzezinski's classic formulation in Friedrich, Carl J. and Brzezinski, Zbigniew, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (Cambridge: Harvar University Press, 1956)Google Scholar. The idea of an “administered society” is a modified version which de-emphasizes the reliance on terror, but basically accepts the major premises of the classic totalitarian model. See Kassof, Allen, “The Administered Society: Totalitarianism Without Terror,” World Politics 16 (July 1964), 558–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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7 For a parallel critique, see Landé, Carl, “Group Politics and Dyadic Politics: Notes for a Theory,” in Schmidt, Steffan W. and others, eds., Friends, Followers, and Factions: A Reader in Political Clientelism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 506–10Google Scholar.

8 Powell, John Duncan, “Peasant Society and Clientelist Politics,” American Political Science Review 64 (June 1970), 411–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; James C. Scott, “Patron-Client Politics and Political Change in Southeast Asia,” in Schmidt (fn. 7), 123–46; Lemarchand, Rene and Legg, Keith, “Political Clientelism and Development: A Preliminary Analysis,” Comparative Politics 4 (January 1972), 148–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Ibid.; James C. Scott, “Political Clientelism: A Bibliographic Essay,” in Schmidt (fn. 7), 483–505; Anthony Hall, “Patron-Client Relations: Concepts and Terms,” ibid., 510–12; Carl Landé, “Introduction: The Dyadic Basis of Clientelism,” ibid., xiii-xxxvii.

10 Burns, John, “Comment on China,” Studies in Comparative Communism 12 (Summer/Autumn 1979), 190–94, at 193CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Ibid.

12 This aspect of clientelism has most usefully been explicated in Eisenstadt, S. N. and Roniger, Louis, “Patron-Client Relations as a Model of Structuring Social Exchange,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 22 (No. 1, 1980), 42–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 The research on which my arguments are based consists of Chinese press accounts, government documents, observations in China (1980, 1982, and 1984), and interviews in Hong Kong (1979–80 and 1984) with former rural residents from various parts of China whose experience ranged from provincial-level cadres to work team members, team leaders, and ordinary peasants. The Hong Kong interviews were with 52 people for a total of over 400 hours. A detailed account of my 1979–80 interviewing project, including a breakdown of the background characteristics of my interviewees, may be found in Oi, Jean C., “State and Peasant in Contemporary China: The Politics of Grain Procurement,” Ph.D. diss. (University of Michigan, 1983)Google Scholar.

14 Eisenstadt and Roniger (fn. 12), 64.

15 A. Doak Barnett, with a contribution by Vogel, Ezra, Cadres, Bureaucracy, and Political Power in Communist China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), 394–98Google Scholar.

16 Potter, Sulamith Heins, “The Position of Peasants in Modern China's Social Order,” Modern China 9 (October 1983), 465–99, at 467CrossRefGoogle Scholar, states that peasants were “forbidden to leave the land.” The grain supply system effectively reinforced this prohibition. The grain ration coupons that peasants needed to buy food outside of the team at other than high prices had to be secured from brigade or higher-level officials.

17 Eisenstadt and Roniger (fn. 12), 50.

18 This is a term used by Chinese peasants to describe autocratic local-level officials.

19 The size of the team was equal to or smaller than the traditional peasant village. It was a relatively small, stable, economic and social organization composed of a group of between 20 and 50 households with an average population of 143 people, some of whom were related, or at least were longtime acquaintances. The numbers vary considerably, however. Official Chinese statistics can be found in Zhongguo Jingji Nianjian 1981 (Beijing: Jingji guanli zazhi she, 1981), chap. 6, p. 9Google Scholar.

20 Only in cases such as the “five guaranteed households,” where the peasant was incapable of work, was the work-point requirement waived. Rations were provided free of charge to the “five guaranteed households” by the team and the brigade.

21 Whether or not a peasant actually received his cash payment due for that year's work depended on a number of factors, such as the team's financial solvency and whether the individual peasant household had any outstanding loans. If the team was in debt or needed cash to pay for collective expenses, peasants would be given an I.O.U. In some teams, peasants went for years without receiving any cash or only a small portion of the money they were owed. In addition, a peasant's work points could not automatically be converted into grain. Ceilings existed on the amount of grain a peasant could secure. See Oi (fn. 13), chap. 3, for details of this system.

22 The system described here is only one of a number of different wage systems. The most comprehensive study of the various work payment systems is Crook, Frederick William, “An Analysis of Work Payment Systems Used in Chinese Mainland Agriculture, 1956–1970,” Ph.D. diss. (Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, 1970)Google Scholar; also see Nathan, Andrew J., “China's Work-Point System: A Study in Agricultural ‘Splittism’,” Current Scene 2 (April 15, 1964)Google Scholar, and Whyte, Martin K., “The Tachai Brigade and Incentives for the Peasants,” Current Scene 7 (August 15, 1969)Google Scholar.

23 Whyte (fn. 22).

24 Of this 9.4%, 10% worked in agricultural enterprises, 51.82% in industrial collective enterprises, and 5–5% in transport. Zhongguo Bailee Nianjian 1980 (Beijing and Shanghai: Zhongguo bailee quanshu chuban she, 1980), 355Google Scholar.

25 The frequency of this problem is hard to ascertain. Even within the same brigade, some teams were short of labor while others suffered from the surplus described above. For example, in one brigade in Fujian Province, only five out of nineteen teams were not land-short. In those five, many of the peasants had migrated abroad. In labor-short teams, peasants from labor-surplus areas were sometimes hired by various team members to “help” farm their assigned plots of land once the fields had been divided under the responsibility system. These “hired laborers” were paid three meals a day, cigarettes, and drink—all worth approximately one yuan.

26 In this example, the lack of work was directly attributed to the curtailment of the team's once lucrative sideline industries. Prior to “taking grain as the key link,” the team did not have a problem of surplus labor.

27 See Parish, William and Whyte, Martin King, Village and Family in Contemporary China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 119–21Google Scholar.

28 Zhongguo Baike Nianjian 1980 (fn. 24), 337.

29 To reassure peasants and encourage them to invest in their fields, a 1984 directive guarantees the use of contracted fields for a period of 15 years without fear of appropriation. “Circular on Rural Work in 1984,” Beijing Review, February 20, 1984, p. 6.

30 The actual authorization (zheng ming) is issued by the brigade.

31 Butler, Steven, “Conflict and Decision Making in China's Rural Administration 1969–76,” Ph.D. diss. (Columbia University, 1979), 90–93Google Scholar.

32 Oi (fn. 13), chaps. 2 and 6.

33 In this team, conditions were particularly severe because cadres at all levels, from the team to the commune, had engaged in “over-reporting.” As a result, 80% of the harvest was sold to the state in 1960.

34 On blat, see Berliner, Joseph, Factory and Manager in the USSR (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on Pratik, see Mintz, Sidney, “Pratik: Haitian Personal Economic Relationships,” in Potter, Jack, Diaz, May, and Foster, George, eds., Peasant Society: A Reader (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967)Google Scholar.

35 This discussion of clientelism as addenda follows Landé (fn. 9).

36 On the possibility of patron-client relations becoming a “central aspect of institutional patterns,” see Eisenstadt and Roniger (fn. 12), 49.

37 One observant former resident of the countryside described the situation thus: “Cadres at different levels have unequal opportunities. Those at the mid-levels look for opportunities and take advantage of them; those at the lower levels who are friends of those in high positions ‘go through the back door’ while those at the higher levels only have to wait for people to come and offer them opportunities.”

38 In practice, this minimum ration is not always adhered to. See Oi (fn. 13), chap. 3.

39 From 1960 to 1966 in Guangdong, for example, those getting overseas remittances were given special coupons for extra rationed goods. This, however, is something of a special case. Areas where overseas remittances play an important role have been largely limited to Guangdong and Fujian Provinces.

40 Sent-down youths were some of the worst offenders of overdrawing and tended to become permanently “overdrawn households.” Part of the problem may have been due to sent-down youths not receiving the same number of work points as local peasants doing the same work. The other part of the problem was the unwillingness or inability of sentdown youths to work. For the most comprehensive treatment of the sent-down youth, see Bernstein, Thomas, Up to the Mountains and Down to the Villages: The Transfer of Youth from Urban to Rural China (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977)Google Scholar.

41 This is similar to Riker's idea of minimal winning coalitions: keep enough support to keep up production but not so much that rewards are too diluted. Riker, William H., The Theory of Political Coalitions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962)Google Scholar.

42 Those with power, however, were not always afraid of taking on clients of “bad” class background who provided sufficient economic benefits. In one case, the son of a Nationalist agent became the client (godson) of a brigade secretary. It may be significant that it was a higher-level cadre, a brigade secretary, who took this sent-down youth as a client.

43 Parish and Whyte (fn. 27), 98–100, show that those with a “bad” class background are at a distinct disadvantage in obtaining leadership positions. Moreover, those related to persons with “bad” class backgrounds were also routine targets in every campaign.

44 Team leaders and work team members reported that those with the “not-so-good” backgrounds were the most cooperative and the least troublesome. They were the easiest to control because they knew that they were the first to be criticized in the event of a campaign, and therefore always walked a thin line. The “poor peasants,” on the other hand, were often the biggest troublemakers. They knew they were “red” and therefore to a certain degree above reprimand.

45 Landé (fn. 9), xxviii.

46 Powell (fn. 8); also see Oi (fn. 13), chap. 6, for a detailed discussion of the team leader as a client to the brigade. Christopher Clapham notes the conflicting role of brokers as agents of the center and spokesmen for the locales. See his “Clientelism and the State,” in Clapham (fn. 2), 10.

47 Landé (fn. 9), xxiii-xxiv.

48 It is not assumed that all clients are accorded equal treatment. As Landé (fn. 9), xxiv, states, there is favoritism within the clientele.

49 Eisenstadt and Roniger (fn. 12), 50.

50 Scott, James C., The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976)Google Scholar; George Foster, “Peasant Society and the Image of the Limited Good,” in Potter and others (fn. 34); Parish and Whyte (fn. 27).

51 Oi (fn. 13), chap 4.

52 Peasants have a saying, “What peasants need three dollars to buy, cadres can get for one dollar. ” The meaning is, of course, that position and personal relations made a difference in pursuing one's interests.

53 When team leaders take advantage of their positions in these ways, peasants term it “zhan xiao pianyi” (loosely translated, “taking small advantages”).

54 Landé (fn. 9), xxiii.

55 Eisenstadt and Roniger (fn. 12).

56 Scott, James C., “Corruption, Machine Politics, and Political Change,” American Political Science Review 63 (December 1969), 1142–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 The relationship between kinship and the prevalence of the patron-client system is a complex one. The data for China are still sketchy. My findings suggest that clanism translates into clientelist behavior most often when there are two or perhaps three strong surname groups within the same team rather than one or many surname groups within a team. But kinship is just one of the many factors that influence whether someone will become a client.

58 Discussions took place, peasants could complain and ask for higher rations, but in the end the team cadres decided the actual amounts. Team cadres had a monopoly on information needed to make such decisions. They knew in advance how much they had to keep for expenses, approximately how much they had to sell to the state, and how much the state would allow the team to distribute to the peasants. There was participation in these routine business meetings, but it was controlled participation: the agenda of issues and outcomes was never much in doubt. In some cases, a decision may have been a foregone conclusion, but the team leaders nonetheless presented it for collective discussion and approval, as a necessary courtesy. The purpose of most collective team meetings was to educate, explain, and convince the peasants of che correctness of decisions that leaders had already made, rather than to allow peasants actually to formulate policy. Slight adjustments in a decision might be made, but the main policy was usually not changed.

59 The “activists” in a team usually consisted of young, ambitious people who were not afraid to speak out—most often the so-called “backbone elements” (gugan fenzt) who had “good” class backgrounds and nothing to hide. These were the people work teams sought out for information on problems in the team. These were also the people with whom work teams met prior to criticism meetings—for instance, to prepare “black materials” (hei zihao) used to incriminate the person under investigation and to decide who would raise what points during the public meeting. The agenda was set and each person's part was rehearsed. At the mass meeting, they would proceed as planned, present the evidence, make the accusations, and then try to arouse the others in the audience to follow their lead.

60 Team leaders are formally elected by team members, but all candidates must be approved by the upper levels. I found that after the Cultural Revolution increasing numbers of team leaders were essentially appointed by the upper levels.

61 Fried, , Fabric of Chinese Society (New York: Octagon Books, 1969)Google Scholar, provides the classic description of the need of peasants to cultivate good relations in their daily lives.

62 Djilas, Milovan, The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System (New York: Praeger, 1957)Google Scholar.

63 Powell (fn. 8).

64 In this sense, my analysis is closer to Popkin's view of clientelism. See Popkin, Samuel, The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 72–82Google Scholar.

65 Scott (fn. 50); James C. Scott and Benedict J. Kerkvliet, “How Traditional Rural Patrons Lose Legitimacy: A Theory with Special Reference to Southeast Asia,” in Schmidt (fn. 7), 439–58; Wolf, Eric R., Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (New York: Harper & Row, 1969)Google Scholar; Moore, Barrington, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Maying of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966)Google Scholar.

66 Popkin (fn. 64).

67 Scott (fns. 8 and 56).

68 These are tentative conclusions based on my research in Hong Kong and China conducted during the summer of 1984. The situation is still in flux, however.

69 Luigi Graziano, “Patron-Client Relationships in Southern Italy,” in Schmidt (fn. 7), 361.

70 Andrew G. Walder, “Communist Social Structure and Workers' Politics in China,” in Falkenheim (fn. 6).

71 Eisenstadt and Roniger (fn. 12), 46.