Whither the West?

Tag: legitimacy

  • Pillars of Sand

    Pillars of Sand

    The fundamental shift in Western legitimacy

    A simple theory could explain the fundamental shift in Western politics in recent years. I propose that we are witnessing a shift in the way governments acquire and maintain legitimacy in the eyes of their populace. In determining whether governments and regulatory bodies are “legitimate”, judgements fall primarily into one of two beliefs: process legitimacy, or outcome legitimacy. Until recently, Western polities overwhelmingly believed in “process legitimacy”: democratically elected governments were inherently legitimate because they followed the process, i.e. they obeyed the laws, and came and went with elections. Whether they passed good or bad policies would make them more or less popular, and would help them to win or lose the next elections, but rarely did their basic legitimacy to govern depend on whether their policies were good or bad.

    In recent decades, though, this has begun to shift, and the populaces of western polities increasingly believe in “outcome legitimacy”: governments are legitimate or illegitimate as a function of how well they respond to the socioeconomic and sociocultural insecurities of their constituents. Many polls and studies reveal this deteriorating belief in democracy. Belief in the legitimacy of the Supreme Court or Congress are abysmal. We can see this in stark relief not only Trumpist claims to the illegitimacy of pluralistic Democratic victories, but also in France where Macron is decried as illegitimate in his accused abandonment of the working class. For the former, consider this excerpt:

    “Even if they don’t subscribe to the more outlandish conspiracies propagated by Trumpists, many Republicans agree that the Democratic party is a fundamentally illegitimate political faction – and that any election outcome that would lead to Democratic governance must be rejected as illegitimate as well. Republicans didn’t start from an assessment of how the 2020 election went down and come away from that exercise with sincerely held doubts. The rationalization worked backwards: They looked at the outcome and decided it must not stand.”

    And for the latter example of Macron, FranceInter could not put better the differences in claims to legitimacy:

    Sur le plan institutionnel, les règles de la démocratie sont simples et claires, le président de la République est celui des candidats qui a obtenu la majorité des suffrages exprimés. Sur ce plan, la légitimité d’Emmanuel Macron est donc incontestable.  

    Pour autant, au soir du premier tour, sur les plateaux de télévision, il y avait quelque chose d’indécent dans la suffisance et l’auto-satisfaction des « dignitaires du régime », souvent passés par des gouvernements de gauche et de droite, avant d’échouer en Macronie… Comme un manque de gravité qui ne correspondait pas aux circonstances et aux enjeux…  

    Pourquoi cela ? Parce que si la victoire d’Emmanuel Macron est indiscutable, la crise de la démocratie est, elle aussi, indéniable. Le président de la République a été réélu sur fond d’abstention massive, en particulier des actifs, face à une candidate qui continue à être délégitimée et même vilipendée par presque tous.        		On an institutional level, the rules of democracy are simple and clear: the President of the Republic is the candidate who has obtained the majority of the votes cast. In this respect, Emmanuel Macron’s legitimacy is therefore unquestionable.  

    And yet, on the evening of the first round, there was something indecent about the smugness and self-satisfaction of the “dignitaries of the regime” on television panels—figures who had often passed through both left- and right-wing governments before ending up in Macron’s camp. There was a certain lack of gravity that did not match the circumstances or the stakes at hand.  

    Why is that? Because while Emmanuel Macron’s victory is indisputable, the crisis of democracy is equally undeniable. The President of the Republic was re-elected amid massive voter abstention, particularly among the working population, against a candidate who continues to be delegitimized and even vilified by almost everyone.  

    It is not the first time that outcome legitimacy has been significant in the west: as Jurgen Habermas claims in his 2013 The Lure of Technocracy, “The [European] Union legitimized itself in the eyes of its citizens primarily through the results it produced rather than by fulfilling the citizens’ political will.” But in general this belief about legitimacy is new to the modern West. It is, however, perfectly valid in other cultural and political systems around the world: Middle Eastern monarchies make no pretense to democracy (in many the denizens are deemed subjects, not citizens, implying no role to play in the political life of the state); in China, the Communist Party historically has relied heavily on its ability to buoy material prosperity and defend China’s image abroad as its primary claims to legitimacy, rather than on claims to democratic processes or popular election (though China does maintain some nominally democratic institutions).

    A fair follow up question to ask here is why this process has occurred. I am not entirely sure, but I have some hypotheses. The first is that the one-two punch of terrorism and the recession in the early 2000s created a climate of increased material insecurity and a need to ensure that governments were actually producing results that protected people physically and economically. A second, non-exclusive reason would be the Gurri hypothesis that distributed network technologies are making people more skeptical of governments and institutions, and want more explicit proof that they are working in the public interest. Other explanations surely abound and I would love to hear them in the comments.

    One could conclude that if this trend towards valuing outcome legitimacy continues, Westerners will become increasingly tolerant of undemocratic and unlawful acts on the parts of their governments, so long as they are able to deliver desired results. The stunned tolerance of Elon Musk’s activities in the US Federal Government, to the extent that it holds, may be due in part to a sense of awe that he is able to move so rapidly and effectively and produce the kind of results that Trump campaigned on.

  • The Heterozygote Advantage and the Crisis of Western Authority

    question

    I.

    There is a concept in biology known as Heterozygote Advantage. If you’re already familiar with this concept, feel free to skip to section II.

    As one may know, sexually reproducing organisms inherit two copies of each gene: one from the mother, one from the father. Sometimes having two identical copies doesn’t mean much. Sometimes it means a lot. Having one recessive allele (gene variant) and one dominant allele usually means that the recessive one can be passed on along with the dominant one, but the dominant one is the one that is presented in the organism. For example, if a child inherits one blue-eyed allele and one brown-eyed allele, the dominant brown-eyed allele is the one that drives (so to speak) the phenotype (the way the organism biologically presents its genes) while the recessive blue-eyed allele rides shotgun, serving no function in the organisms per se but maintaining the possibility of being the one that is passed on to this organism’s offspring when it’s time to send one of the two genes into the next generation’s car, to continue the metaphor.

    Say hypothetically that there’s a recessive gene that allows people to heal really quickly. If you inherit only one copy of this gene, since it’s recessive, the dominant “normal healing” gene is the one that is presented in the organism, and there’s no biological difference from someone not having the “quick healing” gene. If, however, an organism has two parents who have this recessive “quick healing” gene, and happens to inherit both copies, then this child would have the Quick Healing trait. This child could get in deadly car crashes and be more likely to survive, be shot on a battlefield and be able to heal before bleeding out, etc. Even if this child never got an adamantium skeleton and never gained the ability to eject and retract blades from his hands, this child would be more fit – more likely to survive into adulthood and pass on genes – than one who did not have this genetic combination (ceteris paribus). This would be, for most intents and purposes, a good genetic combination to have (leaving aside the fact that in many organisms in nature, quick healing attributes are correlated with higher propensity for cancer). We would say in this situation that this organism has a Homozygote Advantage. This means, there is an advantage to having both copies of a gene where there is not an advantage to having only one.

    Then we have the opposite concept: a heterozygote advantage. As one may be able to infer from the above idea, a heterozygote advantage is one in which it’s more beneficial to have only one copy of an allele than two. The classic example of this is Sickle Cells: one copy of the gene that produces sickle-shaped blood cells makes red blood cells less susceptible to attack by the parasitic plasmodium that causes malaria, conferring an advantage in fitness. Having two copies of this same gene, however, makes too many blood cells too misshapen; the circulatory system struggles to deal with this complication, and Sickle Cell Anemia results, usually ending in premature death. This is a homozygote disadvantage, or a heterozygote advantage.

    II.

    The term “meme” has in recent years taken on a very different meaning than that which it originally had. Professor Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme” in 1976 to refer to the cultural analogue of a gene. In the same way that “genes” were the discrete units of genetic information that were passed on and selected for and allowed a population to achieve continuity and evolve, likewise “memes” were the discrete units of ideas and cultures that were passed on and selected for and allowed sociocultural populations to achieve continuity and evolve.

    In the past decade or two, this term was somewhat misappropriated (though somewhat accurately applied) from its original usage in cultural studies and information theory and used to describe elements of Internet Culture – image macros, witty comment chains on reddit, propensity for voting to name things “Harambe” or “Xy McXface”, or the trope of misdirecting people via links to 80s British Pop music videos. Perhaps because internet culture was create ex nihilo so recently, participants were eager to identify elements of commonality and give them the name “meme”, hence the prominence of this term in reference to internet culture viz. every other area of culture.

    Nevertheless, the original definition of a meme – any transmittable element of culture – remains valid. How broadly or narrowly one should define memes in this sense is open to debate – people’s idea of the proper length of a Toga can be a meme as much as the concept of the Mandate of Heaven or the consensus about the right age for a boy to begin his manhood quest – these are all culturally specific ideas that are transmitted vertically (communicated between generations) and horizontally (communicated verbally, textually, etc. among contemporaneous members of a group), and are subject to inception, evolution, and oblivion.

    III.

    I would like to focus on one particular meme: skepticism. I will define this simply as “the notion that propositions should be doubted”. This is a meme, an idea-gene, if you will, that not everyone has. In some cultures great efforts are made to minimize the prevalence of this meme, namely in rampant authoritarian or theocratic societies in which doubt of the Supreme Leader or The Party or The Faith are seen as ills to be purged; critical thinking is not prized or cultivated. When the skepticism gene is manifest in a skeptical culturotype (the ideological analog to phenotypes) they are pruned from the flock.

    Thus, like any genes or memes, the meme of skepticism is not an unalloyed good. In environs and situations in which survival is precarious and military-esque deference to authority is necessary to stay alive, having a sudden increase in skepticism and doubt of the hierarchy could lead to the death of the society and the individuals that it comprises. But at other times, the meme of skepticism presents great advantages: being creative, willing to go one’s own way, follow one’s inclinations and not blindly stumble after the herd can yield enormous benefits when it comes to science, business, art, politics, or personal interactions. I would posit that there is a strong correlation between the prevalence of the skepticism meme and the level of creativity, dynamism, and liberty of a society.

    But that does not mean that this correlation is purely linear. That does not mean that forever increasing the prevalence of the skepticism gene results in ever more creative, dynamic, and liberated societies; or perhaps it does, but that manifests in ways we don’t like. Because when the low-hanging, transparent falsehoods of life are stripped away, when the lies of the authorities are exposed, how does skepticism know where to stop? How does the skepticism known if it has penetrated the facades and is gnawing through the pillars of the firmament?

    IV.

    When we picture the embodiment of skepticism, we may picture someone like Galileo, or Descartes, or Martin Luther. In the minds of many, skepticism is associated with things that we generally prize in humans: with discovery, with challenging oppressive institutions, with exploration, with innovation, and perhaps with a scientific mindset. We normally wouldn’t associate it with people we despise, with people we think are delusional, with people we might think are in the grip of dogmatic and destructive ways of thinking. We don’t think of Flat Earthers, Anti-Vaxxers, Global Warming Deniers. We don’t think of 9/11 Truthers. We don’t think of Pizzagaters.

    But these groups are in many ways extremely skeptical. In fact, they are far, far more skeptical than the rest of us. They’re homozygous skeptics. They’ve inherited a double-serving of the “skepticism” meme. They doubt not only the facts, but the authorities that produce those facts, the institutions that those authorities serve, and even go so far as to doubt the ideologies that give rise to those institutions and authorities. A natural reaction of most normal people is to say that Flat Earthers are crazy and deluded. But they are saying “using only empirical observation, the world looks flat. You and I have never gone into space, never built a GPS system, never had to calculate and experience parabolic trajectories that take into account the supposed curvature of the Earth. You are taking it on faith from books and authorities that the Earth is round, whereas there have been plenty of societies that just took it from faith and books and authorities that the earth was flat. How are you any better than that?”

    Antivaxxers, dangerous though they are, are equally skeptical of authority and “established” truths. An antivaxxer points to thalidomide, to the vacillating warnings on fat and cholesterol and sugar, to the financial links between pharmaceutical companies and regulators, an Antivaxxer points to Tuskegee and says “how can you trust that?”

    Global Warming Deniers and 9/11 Truthers similarly point to the credibility of the authorities that interpret evidence at us. In an interview on the Ezra Klein Show, journalist danah boyd [sic] makes the argument that Pizzagaters were doing their own form of investigative journalism, truly feeling that they were seeing through secret codes and webs of lies and deceipt to expose a dark Washington DC underground. [source]

    These groups of hyperskeptics are not un-explainable deviants, nor could they not have been predicted. Rather, we created them, you and I and our school systems and our cultural tropes. They are the natural predictable end state of western society: when we encourage everyone to think for themselves, question everything, and doubt authorities, why shouldn’t we doubt all the things we can’t directly observe? Why do we still have any trust in any authorities? Who are we to say “whoa, wait a minute, I didn’t mean question that!”? When the selective pressure of western society encourages the proliferation of the “skepticism” meme, how are we surprised when people begin to inherit it homozygously?

    How does the skepticism know if it has penetrated the facades and is gnawing through the pillars of the firmament?

    V.

    The above skepticism is corrosive in itself, and the game of undermining scientific and medical knowledge presents obvious dangers. But in recent years these tendencies have reached a fever pitch, and become tinged with cynicism. If skepticism is the notion that propositions should be doubted, then its cousin, cynicism, is the notion that motives should be doubted. Cynicism would tell us that people who promise great things, who ask for your trust and loyalty in order to change your life or the world for the better, are usually looking for a way to take advantage of your trust and use you for their own ends.

    This brings us to the crux of this argument, and the fulcrum of Western society: what happens when this skepticism and cynicism is turned on our social and political institutions? What happens when homozygous skepticism is swapped out for cynicism, or occurs alongside it? The fact is that this process is happening now, throughout the West. From Trump to Brexit to Hungary and everywhere in between, the meme of “agenda-calling” is infiltrating social and political discourse. Anyone who wants anything has “an agenda”. The media has a liberal agenda. The EU has an agenda to subdue British power, or to erase Hungarian culture. Scientists have an agenda to destroy the oil industry and American jobs. And of course, their expressed motives – of providing information, of delivering on the promises of liberalism, of securing the peace and health of the world – are just facades to hide their secret abuse, pilfering, and power-grabbing.

    Be skeptical of them. Doubt the institutions. Doubt the motives.

    I do not wish to enter the argument of whether, or to what extent, Russia is actively interfering in Western politics, but I wish to submit that this ideology of cynicism and skepticism intertwined and directed at politicians has long been a core of Russian political psychology, and that it is the idea now infiltrating western political discourse. “I think what the Russian discourse is [is] that it’s, in fact, very difficult to cleave perfectly to [a set of morals],” Nikitin said. “And anyone that claims to the contrary can be unmasked as, in fact, being just as flawed as anyone else is” [source].

    This strategy is commonly called “whataboutism”, but that term misses the mark. “Whataboutism” is, literally, a usage of “what about…” also known as the “tu quoque” (you as well) fallacy. When someone criticizes you, you can respond with an accusation that the other person, or something the other person supports, is guilty of the same thing. Rather, this tactic of agenda-calling, unmasking, and dragging of idols through the mud perhaps deserves terms like “weaponized cynicism”, “weaponized skepticism”, or “weaponized postmodernism”. The idea that all ideologies – democracy, liberalism, good governance, freedom of the press, etc – are merely lofty promises that abusive politicians make to empty your pockets when you’re not looking – is a defense mechanism used by autocrats to make their critics out to be doe-eyed naifs.

    But to return to the Russia question, the fact is that it doesn’t really matter whether this is Russian meddling – because either way, we set ourselves up for it. We encouraged the skepticism. We filled the ideological meme pool with the skeptical meme. We must contend with the results. And we must find new pillars to hold up new firmaments.

    PS.

    An obvious criticism to this description is that there’s no need to resort to genetics and heterozygote advantages to explain this; this is a simple question of extremism. There’s a moderate, healthy amount of skepticism, and then there’s extreme, nigh-solipsistic skepticism. What we need to do is to encourage the healthy amount and discourage the extreme nigh-solipsistic kind.

    But I’m not sure that quite captures the way this works. First of all, it seems hard to pinpoint that a person picked and chose their level of skepticism and thought “hm, I really like being an extremist”; rather, these seem to be a priori propensities to doubt everything or not. In that way, they perhaps operate more like genes than political ideologies, which are at least in part a collection of individual policy and candidate preferences.

    Second, I’m not sure it’s one-dimensional; I think it’s possible that there are two slightly different domains of skepticism that someone can have individually, and only when they inherit the skepticism gene in both domains do they get these dysfunctional outcomes like flat-eartherism. Perhaps these domains are along the lines of “institutional skepticism” – skepticism of the authority of impersonal bodies; “societal skepticism” – skepticism of the veracity of lay common sense; or “empirical skepticism” – skepticism of the authority of senses to deliver veritable outcomes; “scientific skepticism” – skepticism of the truth-finding ability of scientific processes and community. I’m sure we can all think of people who have a few of these attributes, but do we know anyone who is skeptical in all of these domains?

    Can we agree that these are, to a large extent, uncorrelated dimensions – one could be maximally skeptical of science while having no skepticism for societal lay common sense, or vice versa – ?

    To that extent, I do think these operate as discrete attributes rather than a general “skeptical” spectrum.

  • Pride and Prosperity:

    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.