The Chinese Communist Party

Paper Summary:

The paper looks at the ideas of Daniel C. Lynch in his article "Dilemmas of Thought Work in Fin de Siecle China", Gordon White in "Riding the Tiger" and Feng Chen in "Rebuilding the Party's Normative Authority." The paper discusses how these writers show that those who anticipated capitalism as the bringer of democracy did not understand the largely administrative but also intellectual role played by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as well as the low expectations of the Chinese regarding the CCP. The paper explains how all three articles show signs of the CCP attempting to show its sovereignty, but is challenged by ordinary Chinese indifference.

Outline:
Introduction
Daniel C. Lynch
Gordon White
Feng Chen
Analysis and Conclusion

From the Paper:

"Daniel Lynch reviewed the nature of thought-work in the People's Republic of China (PRC) at the end of the 20th century and explained the failure of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to regain control over thought-work or to build the long promised socialist-spiritual civilization for which the Chinese masses were instructed to be patient, for so very long. Society and culture in the PRC have changed radically since the rise of Chinese capitalism in relation to the forces of Globalization. Gordon White wrote on ideological decay as one price of the Reform Era's economic and social changes, what seemed a mere shift to a mixed economy in 1978 taking on all sorts of mammoth changes through the later 1980s and 1990s to make much CCP ideology irrelevant. Feng Chen referred to the CCP as an institution that was under renovation and which described itself as the proper normative authority. However, as all three agree, the role of the CCP and Beijing has been more and more concerned with ordinary administration and laws and policies serving the all-important business sector."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Feng Chen. "Rebuilding the Party's Normative Authority: China's Socialist Spiritual Civilization Campaign." Problems of Post-Communism. November-December. (1998): 33-41.
• Lynch, Daniel C. "Dilemmas of Thought Work in Fin de Siecle China." China Quarterly. 157. (1999): 173-201.
• White, Gordon. "Economic Reform and Ideological Decay - the Decline of Ideology," in Riding the Tiger- the Politics of Economic Reform in Post-Mao China. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1993.

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