The Pillars of CCP Legitimacy

The Chinese Communist Party has ruled over the People’s Republic of China ever since its victory over Nationalist forces in 1949. For the past six decades it has maintained a monopoly on political power despite wars, crises and political dissent, and today is the largest and one of the longest-ruling political parties in the world. Nevertheless the party’s rule does not come easily, and the CCP has turned to various strategies over the years to end dissent and lend legitimacy to the one-party system. To solidify its rule, though, the CCP has turned consistently to two main ways of satisfying the 1.3 billion people of China: first, it taps into strong sentiments of nationalistic pride and identity and binds them to the CCP, and second, it seeks to improve the material quality of life of its citizens and endeavors to present itself as the best means of doing so. It is through these two avenues that the CCP has maintained its power in China both historically and today. Yet even these time-tested methods of legitimation have their intricacies and drawbacks, leaving the CCP in a precarious position of tentative rule.

The Chinese sense of nationalism has been one of the grassroots bases of support for the CCP since the 1930s and the struggle against Japanese invasion and occupation. By the end of the war in 1945 the Communists had seized on nationalism as a powerful recruitment mechanism and articulated it even more effectively than the so-called Nationalists, garnering the momentum necessary to win the ensuing civil war but with the side effect of internalizing nationalist sentiment as a source of identity and legitimacy as a ruling party. On proclaiming the People’s Republic in 1949, Mao declared that “the Chinese people have stood up,” a humble yet blatantly nationalist remark that broke with the universalist Marxist ideology (e.g. “workers of the world unite!”) which the CCP at least nominally followed.

Even as other claims to legitimacy have fallen to the wayside, nationalism still forms part of the backbone of CCP ideology, outlasting even the namesake communism. Indeed, “the Communist Party stirs patriotic feelings to underpin its legitimacy at a time when few, even in its own ranks, put much faith in Marxism” (Kahn). Various issues today lend strength to those Chinese citizens who take a hard line on nationalism as well as providing issues by which the CCP can articulate its nationalist identity, ensuring nationalism plays an important role in both domestic and foreign policy of the CCP.

“Japan, which China says killed or wounded 35 million Chinese from 1937 through 1945, gets the most attention” on the Chinese nationalist front (Kahn). Of course, as the primary opponent against which the CCP built its nationalist identity, Japan naturally feels the brunt of Chinese nationalism. Anti-Japanese sentiment has surged in recent years, with events such as the outrage over the Zhao Wei dress incident and glorification of Feng Jinhua’s desecration of the Yasukuni shrine perhaps only the first in a long line of anti-Japanese outbursts in China (Gries “New Thinking” 832, 5).

Though Japan may be the most prominent target on the CCP’s nationalist agenda it is certainly not alone, as “official propaganda and the national education system stress the indignities suffered at the hands of foreign powers from the mid-19th century through World War II,” known as China’s “Century of Humiliation” (Kahn). During that time period European, American, and Japanese interests subjugated China, inflicting wounds which still scar the Chinese consciousness. However, the re-acquisition of Hong Kong and Macau in the 1990s served as a rallying point for Chinese nationalist who depicted China as a lion roused from slumber, all of which played perfectly into the age-old narrative that the CCP was leading China to national might.

However, amidst the pride of power comes apprehensiveness of weakness compared to the United States, as illustrated by the 1999 bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. The incident, despite American assurances that it was purely accidental, stoked a firestorm of anti-western and, more specifically, anti-American sentiment. However, through Chinese eyes, the bombing “was not an isolated event; rather, it was the latest in a long series of western aggressions against China” (Gries “CNN” 17). The Chinese public was outraged, and the CCP, reflecting such strong national sentiment, echoed the people’s outcries of intentionality and called for apologies from the US (Gries “CNN” 19-20).

This illustrates an important change: the power of nationalism can be at times unwieldy and has become a force beyond the CCP’s control. “The 1990s witnessed the emergence of a genuinely popular nationalism in china that should not be conflated with state or official nationalism…the party’s legitimacy now depends on accommodating popular opinion” and as such the CCP has in recent years become subject to the force it once commanded (Gries “CNN” 20). This has dire ramifications for the future of Chinese power, as the CCP can no longer direct a course in its foreign affairs but must placate the hardliners in populist fashion. The issue of Japan is one which may play out worst for China’s future. The CCP is unable to pursue any conciliatory policies with Japan for fear of appearing “weak before nationalists at home” and thus cannot use Japan to counterbalance the influence of the United States – an outcome which is in the long-term worst interest of a China with global ambitions (Gries “New Thinking” 848).

Thus nationalism, long one of the CCP’s reins of power, may have lost its power to effect loyalty and fully legitimize CCP rule. Instead of using nationalism to its advantage, it has become a necessity for party survival, even if its application may be to the long-term detriment of Chinese power. Unfortunately for the CCP, nationalism and foreign policy may not be the only areas wherein necessity, not desire, has become the call to action.

The other traditional area in which the CCP has articulated its legitimacy has been its stewardship of the people, bettering their lives materially and reducing inequality and exploitation by the ruling class. At the outset of the People’s Republic this was the nominal goal of the communists (and indeed communism in general) but over the course of the next thirty years, disastrous policies in socialist and communist endeavors resulted in the Reform and Opening of the post-Mao era (Thornton). Since that time China has transitioned to a full market economy, shedding almost all vestiges of its communist origin and namesake, “gambling that people would overlook the failure of communism as an ideology if Communists could make them richer” (Pan 117). What has resulted, ironically, is the exact exploitation that the CCP came into power to eradicate: authorities systematically repress peasants, income inequality is on the rise, and corruption and graft deprive the people of wealth and opportunity. Yet the CCP attempts to address all of these issues and others, managing to cleave tentatively to power by supposedly bettering the lives of its people.

Pension reform represents a major way in which the CCP has averted unrest in recent years while simultaneously addressing issues of inequality, with efforts to provide a basic social safety net  materializing in the Social Insurance Law passed in 2010. Representing “a major step in the CCP’s efforts to tackle problems of income inequality and inadequate welfare” the legislation aims to unify and codify many of China’s disparate and inadequate welfare systems (Frazier 386). By this increase in welfare and pension benefits, the CCP sought to avoid the “often dramatic urban protests” which “posed multiple challenges to the CCP’s legitimacy” and thus the party shored up support amongst the urban poor and re-affirming its narrative of working for the betterment of the people.

One of the longest-standing and most well-known of the CCP’s solutions has been the One Child Policy which is aimed at controlling once-unsustainable birthrate by limiting most families to having one child. Through the policy, “officials have sought to curb the excesses and inequities and have argued that the policy has prevented roughly 400 million births and allowed the country to prosper and better live within its resources” allowing material wealth and opportunity to be distributed amongst fewer people overall, helping to secure their welfare in the long term (Yardley). However, the policy threatens a future drawback: demographic crisis. “China’s fertility rate is now extremely low, and the country’s population is aging rapidly,” indicating that in the near future, young workers may be insufficient to sustain the more populous elderly (Yardley).  In response to this looming issue, CCP policymakers have flirted with altering or ending this longstanding policy, demonstrating that working for the good of the people has been the goal all along: first reducing birthrates to prevent overpopulation, then relaxing restrictions to prevent demographic collapse, both of which work in the interest of national stability, ensuring government legitimacy.

Perhaps most importantly, the struggle against corruption has been one in which the CCP aims to garner loyalty by casting itself as a staunch defender of the people, against abusive local officials. In recent years corruption cases such as that of party officials in Shenyang and “shoddy construction” of earthquake-felled buildings in Sichuan has revealed enormous corruption at the local level (Pan 131, Alpert). Without fail, however, the “state media [present] the case[s] as an example of the party’s resolve to keep its cadres honest” and unerringly portrays corruption as a purely local issue and anathema to the CCP’s national practices and ideals (Pan 131).

Yet despite all its toil and propaganda, the CCP’s decades-old narrative of working for the good of the people may finally be beginning to wither away, for “China’s propaganda machine…is sometimes hamstrung in the age of the Internet, especially when it tries to manipulate a pithy narrative about the abuse of power” (Wines). As news such as the Li Gang case spreads around the country and the national populace becomes aware of the “scale of malfeasance” transpiring around them, it may not be long before the legitimacy of one-party rule is irreparably damaged (Pan 131).

So how does the Chinese Communist Party maintain its power today? It does so in the same ways it always has. By taking up the banner of national pride and strength, the CCP earns the support and loyalty of nationalist elements. And by portraying itself as the supporter and benefactor of the people it gains the trust of the common man. But as the tides of history turn and the people learn to contest the monopoly of Communist power, the CCP may find its twin pillars of legitimacy looking remarkably fragile in the coming years.

Works Cited

• Alpert, John and Matthew O’Neill. China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province. Dirs. Jon Alpert and Matthew O’Neill. 2010.

• Frazier, Mark. “From Status to Citizenship in China’s Emerging Welfare State.” Gries, Peter Hays and Stanley Rosen. Chinese Politics: State, Society and the Market. RoutledgeCourzon, 2010. 386-404.

• Gries, Peter Hays. “China’s “New Thinking” on Japan.” The China Quarterly (2005): 831-850.
• —. China’s New Nationalism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.

• Kahn, Joseph. “Beijing Finds Anti-Japan Propaganda a 2-Edged Sword.” The New York Times 3 May 2005.

• Pan, Philip. Out of Mao’s Shadow. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008.

• Thornton, Patricia. “Comrades and Collectives in Arms: Tax Resistance, Evasion, and Avoidance Strategies in post-Mao China.” Gries, Peter Hays and Stanley Rosen. State and Society in 21st Century China. RoutledgeCourzon, 2004.

• Wines, Michael. “China’s Censors Misfire in Abuse-of-Power Case.” The New York Times 17 November 2010.

• Yardley, Jim. “China wants gradual shift away from its one-child policy.” The New York Times 8 December 2008.