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  • Missionaries of the Party: Work-team Participation and Intellectual Incorporation

  • Elizabeth J. Perry
  • Journal:
    The China Quarterly / Volume 248 / Issue S1 / November 2021
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    25 August 2021, pp. 73-94
    Print publication:
    November 2021
    • Article
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  • Among the most distinctive features of Chinese Communist Party governance is the frequent deployment of work teams to conduct campaigns, implement policies and troubleshoot crises. An underappreciated aspect of work-team operations from Land Reform to the present has been the active participation of educated intellectuals as key intermediaries between central leaders and grassroots society. Serving in effect as “missionaries” of the Party, intellectual work-team members function as trained “ritual specialists” in carrying out their appointed mission. Although work teams are often not the most efficient or effective means of governance, the impact of work-team experience on team members themselves is consequential. Employing quasi-religious practices designed to promote the ideological incorporation of intellectuals, work teams have helped to forestall the emergence in China of an alienated class of dissidents like those whose criticisms eroded the legitimacy of Communist regimes elsewhere in the world.