Extant literature on Chinese elite politics tend to argue that Chinese officials work under a political system very different from a western-Weberian bureaucracy. Factional patron-client relationship is considered a dominant factor affecting political appointment of high-level officials. However, prior findings have been mainly based on governors of provincial or prefectural jurisdictions or central committee members. State Council ministers and vice-ministers are largely missing in the previous analysis. Our research examines State Council ministers and vice-ministers under the administration of President Xi Jinping. This high-level bureaucrat group arguably is most comparable to the political appointees in Weberian bureaucracies. We systematically analyze their types of patronage along the policy-politics divide and loyalty basis. We also bring in the dimension of expertise to further identify the extent of professionalization of Chinese ministers. We find a variety of patronage existing among Chinese ministers. Political loyalty is only one kind of the patronage affecting personnel configurations of the State Council.

Compared to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, China presents an entirely new challenge to the democracies because it is closely intertwined with the latter economically and socially. The CCP’s increasingly dictatorial turn cannot be explained by Xi Jinping’s personality, but the CCP’s logical development. The only way for the democracies to effectively protect themselves from, and counter, the CCP’s expansion is to form an alliance and take collective actions to demand that the CCP make meaningful changes toward respecting human rights, the rule of law, and fair and open markets. To be effective, the democracies should adopt a “tit for tat, delink-ready” strategy in pushing the CCP to make desired changes. Collectively, the major democracies have more bargaining power than the CCP, and thus should stand firm on their demands from the CCP. For MNCs, the book offers several tips to help them in formulating China-related strategies based on the perspectives of China, Inc. and China’s reliance on the relation-based system. For management scholars, the book opens new research areas in the theory of the firm, institutional theory, and other theoretical issues.

This chapter first explains how the Chinese Communist Party is organized and controls the political system. Unlike the political parties in mature democracies, the Chinese Communist Party is a Leninist party that resembles a secret society, characterized by monopolistic communist ideology, strict hierarchy, exclusive membership, and two unique party organs: the Propaganda Department, and the United Front Work Department. In such a political system, the party eclipses the entire society, including the government, creating a unique party-state that imposes absolute rule over China. The chapter further shows that, leveraging its total control, the party-state creates a low human rights environment in China that enables the party-state to achieve its objectives with few costs and little resistance. In the past four decades, China’s economy grew rapidly, creating a large middle class. However, due to its total dependence on the party, the newly emerged middle class is in no position to push for democracy and the rule of law.

This chapter investigates the development of judicial reforms and discusses recent changes of court management and the roles of judges within courts. It further sets out the contributions that civil procedure reforms made to the institutional changes effected in the judiciary during the early court reforms of the 1990s. The aim of the reforms to the civil procedure system was to adjust the role of the courts vis-à-vis litigants to protect the latter’s procedural rights and check judicial power. The readjustment of the relation between judges and the parties to a civil trial, and the underlying academic discourse supporting it, promoted judicial transparency and legal professionalism. It also spurred discussion of broader reforms targeting judicial independence. For example, changes were made to the bureaucratic management structure of the courts. Efforts have also been made to protect the independence of the courts by shielding them from local government interference. Despite these well-intended measures, however, the transformation of bureaucratic court management into mechanisms of trial accountability has encountered obstacles in practice. Courts operate according to both a legal and political logic, and institutional reforms can achieve success only if they take both into account.

After a brief introduction to the concept of judicial (dis-)empowerment and its application in an authoritarian context, the chapter compares the main actors in and procedures of corruption investigation pre- and post-reform to pinpoint the exact legal and structural changes brought about by the reform. It discusses how the newly established supervision commissions have changed the roles of the procuratorate and courts in criminal procedures against corruption, as well as their powers vis-à-vis investigators and party and executive organs at the same level. The chapter then examines the institutional embeddedness of the supervision commissions within the broader structure of the party-state’s dual system and central–local relations, before challenging the extant research that comprehends the new anti-corruption mechanism as a successful centralisation measure of the Communist Party of China. Its ultimate argument is that by legally transferring the jurisdiction of criminal investigations of corruption from the procuratorates to the supervision commissions, and consequently to the Commission for Discipline Inspection, the reform has substantially weakened the judiciary’s power vis-à-vis local party committees and other state institutions.