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The Study of Chinese Politics: Toward a Third Generation of Scholarship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Harry Harding
Harry Harding
Affiliation:
Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution
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Research on contemporary Chinese politics can be divided into two distinct generations since its initiation in the early 1960s. The first, produced before the Cultural Revolution, was characterized by general description rather than systematic comparison or sophisticated conceptualization. The second generation, which appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, assigned greater attention to describing the variation of Chinese politics over space and time, identifying the informal norms and mechanisms by which Chinese politics operates, and developing general theories of the Chinese political process. In a third generation, which is just now beginning to emerge, we should see efforts to absorb the new sources of information now available about China; to sort, test, and amalgamate the competing models produced by the second generation; to integrate the analysis of Chinese politics with the rest of comparative politics; and to study Chinese politics in an interdisciplinary fashion.

Type
Review Articles
Information
World Politics , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , January 1984 , pp. 284 - 307
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1984

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References

1 Determining which articles fall into this category is, of course, a somewhat arbitrary exercise. But if, as seems reasonable, we exclude review essays, research notes, and trip reports, and if we also exclude essays not written by political scientists, we obtain the following results for the last five years: in Journal of Asian Studies, two articles, or 0.1 per issue; in Modern China, ten articles (two of which actually constituted a single essay which had been divided into two parts for publication), or 0.5 per issue; and in China Quarterly, eighteen articles, or 0.9 per issue.

2 Lewis, John Wilson, Leadership in Communist China (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1963)Google Scholar; Doak Barnett, A., Cadres, Bureaucracy, and Political Power in Communist China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967)Google Scholar; Townsend, James R., Political Participation in Communist China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967)Google Scholar; Schram, Stuart R., Mao Tse-tung (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1966)Google Scholar; Schurmann, Franz, Ideology and Organization in Communist China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966)Google Scholar; Vogel, Ezra, Canton Under Communism: Programs and Politics in a Provincial Capital, 1949–1968 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969)Google Scholar; and William Skinner, G. and Winckler, Edwin A., “Compliance Succession in Rural Communist China: A Cyclical Theory,” in Etzioni, Amitai, ed., A Sociological Reader on Complex Organizations (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1969), 410–38.Google Scholar

3 Vogel (fn. 2), viii.

4 Treadgold, Donald W., ed., Soviet and Chinese Communism: Similarities and Differences (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967)Google Scholar; Johnson, Chalmers, ed., Change in Communist Systems (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1970).Google Scholar Richard Lowenthal's article in the Johnson volume, which compared competing political tendencies in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and China, is a major exception to this generalization; see Lowenthal, “Development vs. Utopia in Communist Policy,” ibid., 33–116.

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7 Fairbank (fn. 5).

8 Ibid., 664.

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12 Townsend, James, Politics in China (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974).Google Scholar

13 On education: Taylor, Robert I., Education and University Enrollment Policies in China, 1949–1971 (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1973).Google Scholar On public health: Lampton, David M., The Politics of Medicine in China: The Policy Process, 1949–1977 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1977).Google Scholar On agricultural mechanization and development: Butler, Steven, Agricultural Mechanization in China: The Administrative Impact (New York: East Asian Institute, Columbia University, 1978)Google Scholar; Stavis, Benedict, The Politics of Agricultural Mechanization in China (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1978).Google Scholar On industrial management: Andors, Stephen, China's Industrial Revolution: Politics, Planning, and Management, 1949 to the Present (New York: Pantheon, 1977)Google Scholar; Chung, Chong-wook, Maoism and Development: The Politics of Industrial Management in China (Seoul: Seoul National University Press, 1980).Google Scholar On science and technology: Suttmeier, Richard P., Research and Revolution: Science Policy and Societal Change in China (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1974).Google Scholar On bureaucratic management: Harding, Harry, Organizing China: The Problem of Bureaucracy, 1949–1976 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1981).Google Scholar On the rustication of youth: Bernstein, Thomas P., 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 On national minority policy: Dreyer, June Teufel, China's Forty Millions: Minority Nationalities and National Integration in the People's Republic of China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976).Google Scholar

14 White, Lynn T. III, Careers in Shanghai (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978)Google Scholar; Solinger, Dorothy, Regional Government and Political Integration in Southwest China, 1949–1954: A Case Study (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Lieberthal, Kenneth G., Revolution and Tradition in Tientsin, 1949–1952 (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; McMillen, Donald, Chinese Communist Power and Policy in Xinjiang, 1949–1977 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1979)Google Scholar; Bennett, Gordon, Huadong: The Story of a Chinese People's Commune (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1978).Google Scholar

15 Both Solinger (fn. 14) and Lieberthal (fn. 14), for example, limited their studies to the early 1950s.

16 White (fn. 14) discussed the opportunities for personal mobility in Shanghai.

17 MacFarquhar, , The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, 1: Contradictions Among the People, 1956–1957 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974)Google Scholar; Ahn, , Chinese Politics and the Cultural Revolution (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1976)Google Scholar; Fingar, , “Domestic Policy and the Quest for Independence,” in Fingar, Thomas and the Stanford Journal of International Studies, eds., China's Quest for Independence: Policy Evolution in the 1970s (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1980), 25–92.Google Scholar

18 Shue, , Peasant China in Transition: The Dynamics of Development Toward Socialism, 1956 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Baum, , Prelude to Revolution: Mao, the Party, and the Peasant Question, 1962–66 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975)Google Scholar; and Lee, , The Politics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution: A Case Study (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978).Google Scholar

19 Chang, Parris H., “Research Notes on the Changing Loci of Decision in the CCP,” China Quarterly, No. 44 (October-December 1970), 169–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Oksenberg, Michel C., “Policy Making Under Mao, 1949–68: An Overview,” in Lindbeck, John M. H., ed., China: Management of a Revolutionary Society (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1971), 79–115Google Scholar; Lieberthal, Kenneth, A Research Guide to Central Party and Government Meetings in China, 1949–1975 (White Plains, N.Y.: International Arts and Sciences Press, 1976).Google Scholar

20 Oksenberg, Michel C., “Methods of Communication within the Chinese Bureaucracy,” China Quarterly, No. 57 (January-March 1974), 1–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lieberthal, Kenneth, Central Documents and Politburo Politics in China, Michigan Papers in Chinese Studies No. 33 (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Solomon, , Mao's Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Pye, , The Spirit of Chinese Politics: A Psychocultural Study of the Authority Crisis in Political Development (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968)Google Scholar; Falkenheim, , “Political Participation in China,” Problems of Communism 27 (May-June 1978), 18–32Google Scholar; Ahn, , “The Cultural Revolution and China's Search for Political Order,” China Quarterly, No. 58 (April-June 1974), 249–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nathan, , “A Factionalism Model for CCP Politics,” China Quarterly, No. 53 (January-March 1973), 34–66Google Scholar; Harding (fn. 13).

22 Solomon (fn. 21); Cell, Charles, Revolution at Work: Mobilization Campaigns in China (New York: Academic Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Hiniker, Paul, Revolutionary Ideology and Chinese Reality: Dissonance Under Mao (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1977)Google Scholar; Ting, William P. Y., “A Longitudinal Study of Chinese Military Factionalism, 1949–1973,” Asian Survey 15 (October 1975), 896–910CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wong, Paul, China's Higher Leadership in the Socialist Transition (New York: Free Press, 1976)Google Scholar; Dittmer, Lowell, Liu Shao-chi'i and the Chinese Cultural Revolution: The Politics of Mass Criticism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974)Google Scholar; also see Solinger (fn. 14).

23 For a somewhat longer summary of each of the models, see Starr, John Bryan, “From the 10th Party Congress to the Premiership of Hua Kuo-feng: The Significance of the Colour of the Cat,” China Quarterly, No. 67 (September 1976), 457–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Nathan (fn. 21); Tsou, Tang, “Prolegomenon to the Study of Informal Groups in CCP Politics,” China Quarterly, No. 65 (January 1976), 98–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 Oksenberg, Michel C., China: The Convulsive Society, Headline Series No. 203 (New York: Foreign Policy Association, December 1970)Google Scholar; Oksenberg, and Goldstein, Steven, “The Chinese Political Spectrum,” Problems of Communism 23 (March-April 1974), 1–13Google Scholar; Winckler, Edwin A., “Policy Oscillations in the People's Republic of China: A Reply,” China Quarterly, No. 68 (December 1976), 734–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Whitson, William W., “Organizational Perspectives and Decision-Making in the Chinese Communist High Command,” in Scalapino, Robert A., ed., Elites in the People's Republic of China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1972), 381–415Google Scholar; Lampton (fn. 13).

27 Oksenberg, Michel C., “Occupational Groups in Chinese Society and the Cultural Revolution,” in Oksenberg, and others, The Cultural Revolution: 1967 in Review, Michigan Papers in Chinese Studies No. 2 (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1968), 1–44Google Scholar; Liu, Alan P. L., Political Culture and Group Conflict in Communist China (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Clio Books, 1976)Google Scholar; Moody, Peter, Opposition and Dissent in Contemporary China (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1977).Google Scholar

28 Teiwes, Frederick C., “Provincial Politics in China: Themes and Variations,” in Lindbeck (fn. 19), 116–89.Google Scholar

29 Whitson, William W., “The Concept of Military Generation,” Asian Survey 8 (November 1968), 921–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yahuda, Michael, “Political Generations in China,” China Quarterly, No. 80 (December 1979), 793–805.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 Teiwes, Frederick C., “Chinese Politics, 1949–1965: A Changing Mao,” Current Scene 12 (January 1974 and February 1974), 1–15 and 1–18.Google Scholar

31 Chen, Pi-chao, “In Search of Chinese National Character via Child-Training,” World Politics 25 (July 1973), 608–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mote, Frederick, “China's Past in the Study of China Today—Some Comments on the Recent Work of Richard Solomon,” Journal of Asian Studies, 32 (November 1972), 107–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tsou, Tang, “Western Concepts and China's Historical Experience,” World Politics 21 (July 1969), 655–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 This is true of an earlier version of one of the works under review here: Pye's, The Dynamics of Factions and Consensus in Chinese Politics: A Model and Some Propositions, R-2566-AF (Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, July 1980).Google Scholar The author showed good judgment in eliminating the propositional framework when revising his manuscript for final publication.

31 Virtually the only exception was the collaborative work of Schapiro and Lewis comparing the roles of leaders in mobilizational systems: Leonard Schapiro and Lewis, John W., “The Roles of the Monolithic Party under the Totalitarian Leader,” in Lewis, John W., ed., Party Leadership and Revolutionary Power in China (London: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 114–45.Google Scholar

34 Oksenberg, , A Bibliography of Secondary English Language Literature on Contemporary Chinese Politics (New York: East Asian Institute, Columbia University, n.d.), iv.Google Scholar

35 Nathan, , “Policy Oscillation in the People's Republic of China: A Critique,” China Quarterly, No. 68 (December 1976), 720–34, at 730.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 Dittmer (fn. 22).

37 Oksenberg and Goldstein (fn. 25).

38 This paragraph is based on the more detailed argument found in Harding, Harry, “Reappraising the Cultural Revolution,” Wilson Quarterly 4 (Autumn 1980), 132–41.Google Scholar

39 Whitson's, William monumental study of the Chinese military, The Chinese High Command: A History of Communist Military Politics, 1927–71 (New York: Praeger, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, employs, variously, factional analysis, generational analysis, tendency analysis, and bureaucratic analysis.

40 Teiwes, , “‘Rules of the Game' in Chińese Politics,” Problems of Communism 28 (September-December 1979), 67–76.Google Scholar

41 Examples of recent works based on field research in China include Tsou, Tang, Blecher, Marc, and Meisner, Mitch, ”Organization, Growth and Equality in Xiyang County: A Survey of Fourteen Brigades in Seven Communes,” Part I, Modern China 5 (January 1979), 3–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Part II, Modern China 5 (April 1979), 139–86; and Pepper, Suzanne, “China's Universities: New Experiments in Socialist Democracy and Administrative Reform“a Research Report,” Modern China 8 (April 1982), 147–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The kind of information that can be obtained from interviews with Chinese officials is evident in Oksenberg, Michel, “Economic Policy-Making in China: Summer 1981,” China Quarterly, No. 90 (June 1982), 165–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42 For a fuller development of this point, see Harding, Harry, “From China with Disdain: New Trends in the Study of China,” Asian Survey 22 (October 1982), 934–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 This typology of leaders is drawn from Downs, Anthony, Inside Bureaucracy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chap. IX.

44 Dittmer (fn. 22).