Notes from reading the book “China’s Political System” (ed. Heilmann, 2016)

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Context

• These notes were made by an AI governance researcher who focuses on China in Autumn/Winter 2023 while reading this book as a way of learning more about China’s domestic policy-making.
• Someone said that the book is excellent for understanding this topic. The book does not discuss AI at all, but I focus on insights that might be relevant for AI governance practitioners.^[1]
• In January 2024 I quickly cleaned up the notes and shared, in case other AI governance people would benefit from the notes. Note that the claims in this document are generally from the author rather than me.
• I bolded the text that seems most important and non-obvious. I recommend that readers with little time just read the bolded parts.

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1 Analyzing Chinese Politics

Various other contextual points

• “Collective trauma” from Western and Japanese military and economic superiority from beginning of C19. Shapes attitudes toward towards West and Japan – this is particularly visible with respect to China’s territorial disputes with Japan and its rivalry with the US.
• Historically (i.e even before the CCP) less division of powers than in the West
• China’s political leadership has put a lot of energy into channeling population’s interest in Confucian traditions into legitimizing itself.
• Life difficult for China-based journalists who write critical stories

• Little access from foreign journalists to political figures other than at press conferences

2 The CCP and State Institutions

Section 2.3 seems particularly helpful in the book for AI governance researchers.

P47 Party’s political control institutions;

• Party bodies with supervisory responsibility over key areas, e.g. policy, judiciary, military, economy, society
• CCP monopoly in recruiting and supervising leading personnel in party + government + government-related economic enterprises, etc.
• Internal party discipline commission outside of the state judiciary, operating on political instructions (and giving party cadres de facto immunity from state judiciary bodies).
• [Etc]

P48 Executive power is concentrated in the Politburo Standing Committee (around 7 members)

State bodies do regular administrative and policy implementation; party does party discipline, media oversight, propaganda, internal security / secret services.

P49 “With the aid of a large number of regional economic-policy experiments, such as the SEZs and the urban pilot projects, China has succeeded in phasing in market elements.”

Around p50 general framing of the CCP adapting Marxism to ‘the Chinese situation’ and being very willing to adapt over time

P54 “After Xi Jinping assumed power, the party’s strategy of legitimation began to stress a reliance on nationalism. For example, immediately after his appointment as general secretary in 2012, Xi coined the guiding principle of the ‘China dream’, which he describes as ‘the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’, whereby the party accomplishes its mission of liberating the Chinese people from poverty and oppression and once again transforms the country into a ‘wealthy and powerful nation’.”

• Unlike the American dream, the China dream is framed in terms of the nation (rather than the individual).

P59 National People’s Congress (NPC) = legislative body + formally the “highest organ of state power”. Indirectly elected every 5 years. It has 3000 people so is not an effective legislative body. Makes various big decisions like constitutional amendments, electing president, going to war. Supposedly the NPC elects people to high-ranking government offices, but this is in practice controlled by CCP bodies.

• Standing committee of the NPC has 161 members. Enacts most laws.

Chairman of the PRC = “the President”. In practice this has almost always (since the 1990s) been the same as the general secretary / paramount leader. (So Xi Jinping is the President, but it’s not his main title)

P61 Constitution of the PRC is a political document that does not fundamentally affect how political institutions operate.

P62 About 6% of China’s population in the CCP, but a lot of them just for pragmatic reasons, e.g. that it’s helpful for getting jobs in public sector and state-owned enterprises.

• P62 There can be a CCP grassroots org when 3+ party members meet in one org or location. There are >4 million of them (including in more than half of all private companies).

P64. Detail on the National Communist Party Congress (which happens every 5 years).

• Big deal for setting ideological principles, national strategy. >2000 delegates.
• Appoints the Central Committee, which approves appointments to leading CCP positions, as well as some big policy questions.

P66 Politburo (around 25 members) + Politburo standing committee (around 7 members, subset of the politburo). Highest decision-making and leadership bodies. Composition of the Politburo is settled by lengthy advance negotiations within the party leadership. Names are then submitted for approval to the Central Committee.

P70 International Liaison Department. Working organ of the CCP central committee (there are only 7 of these). Forms relationships with parties in other countries. Originally these were ideological collaborations, but now its useful as a backchannel.

P71 China National Security Commission. Established 2013. Consolidates all the relevant security institutions, including the PLA, under the leadership of the CCP general secretary as a way of coordinating them.

P72 “Without exception the CCP appoints personnel for leadership positions in both government and administrative bodies. Moreover, decisions made by government bodies must follow those guidelines established by the parallel party committees or by the party groups established within the government bodies.”

P74 Heads of SOEs [state owned enterprises] also members of party committees and can be removed (from SOEs?) by the party system. So there’s strong political control of SOEs

P75 Some intra-party democracy at low levels. Xi has stopped this at a high level.

P76 “The CCP remains the only organization through which one can obtain political power in China. As of the present, no other elites or organizational groups have emerged from the economy or the society that can compete with the CCP or challenges its monopoly of power beyond the localities.”

• Coopting emerging social groups and associations with the help of state-controlled mass organizations
• POlitically undesirable groups the targets of powerful repression
• CCP has lost control of religious groups and criminal gangs in some rural regions and city districts - but its loss of control is within narrow regional limits.

Central government (technically separate from CCP)

• State Council: Heads the government at national level. Has a premier (“overall responsibility for the work of the government) + 4 vice-premiers + 4 state councilors (the latter do work in specific topics, e.g. there’s one for national defense).
• There are Ministries and commissions for particular topics. The different names are arbitrary.
• There are so-called “super ministries” + “super commissions” (basically formed from the mergers of earlier ministries).

• E.g. the Ministry of Commerce does a very wide range of important economic things.
• There’s a ministry for managing enterprises that are state-owned by the central government. This is about a 100. Explicitly aiming for national champions. Most of China’s SOEs (>100,000) are owned by regional governments so are not under the control of this ministry.

83 Although party/constitution is framed as very centralized/unitary, “with several important exceptions (foreign affairs, defense, and taxation), there is no vertically integrated administrative organization in China to coherently carry out the instructions of the central government. Each administrative level has its own organizational structure that is formally identical to that of the next higher level.”

• Lower levels have some latitude in terms of policy implementation
• But higher up levels can revise or revoke decisions make at the lower levels

P85 Levels of government:

• Central government
• Provincial: provinces + 4 autonomous regions + directly administered municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Chongqing). The autonomous regions (e.g. Tibet) were created for ethnic minorities but have less autonomy because central government is suspicious of such politically sensitive regions.
• Prefectural (most cities are in this category)
• County
• Township

Hong Kong and Macau are special autonomous regions and don’t fit into the taxonomy neatly.

Special Economic Zones are technically subordinate to provincial-level governments but have a lot of freedom to maneuver e.g. wrt taxation and regulation.

P90 Coordination between central government and the provinces is hard. E.g. provinces do environmentally-destructive economic stuff because they get a lot of the economic impacts but only some of the environmental impacts.

• Though the central government can override decisions and the party can discipline people in provincial governments.

P92 “Informal federalism” - a lot of economic and financial responsibilities are decentralized. A lot of consensus-building between different levels of government (including sometimes in a formalized way).

[I skipped the section from p94 on the Special Administrative Regions Hong Kong and Macau)

P101- Local governments can implement political directives in different ways. Some of China’s big reforms (e.g. in health insurance) have come from generalizing local experiments. County governments are the most important of the local levels.

P105 During the period of the planned economy, China’s fiscal revenue was primarily derived from the profits of the SOEs. From the 1990s these SOEs had more control over their profits (e.g. reinvesting them). Tax reform. Most money goes to the central government, though some goes to subnational governments. Central government transfers some money to subnational governments.

109 From the 1990s, there have been deficits in the central government budget that are financed by government bonds. Public debt is higher than it appears because there are loans to SOEs by state-owned banks; these are in effect publicly-funded subsidies.

111 In 2013 total public debt (including local levels) around 53% of GDP. Sustainable by international standards. Though in fact the numbers are higher because of state-banked loans. Debt is around a third central gov debt, a third local gov debt, a third debt guaranteed by local govs.

112 Transfer payments to local governments are the largest item in the central government budget. Second is generally defense.

114 “Cadre” = general designation for any leading officials appointed by the CCP to serve in party, government, administration, judiciary, SOEs, etc.

115 Leading party cadres are basically the more important cadres - “Chinese power elite”. There were about 650,000 leading party cadres in 2015.

115 Nomenklatura system: Defines the functions and job titles of leading party cadres. Based on 3 lists:

• List of cadre positions to be filled and overseen directly by Communist Party HQ. This is about 4000 positions. “At the top of China’s pyramid of political power”.
• List of cadre positions to be filled by regional party offices, but where party leadership can veto appointments
• Cadre reserve list: List of people suitable to fill the leadership positions in question

117 There are formal ways of selecting cadres but in practice it is often about patronage and personal networks

118 Overwhelmingly public-sector employees don’t work for the central government but rather SOEs or regional governments

125 Executive orders and provisions by the State council and other gov entities constitute the largest proportion of legal regulations – particularly for economic things.

129 onwards National People’s Congress:

• Thousands of representatives. Approves big decisions but this is pretty rubber stampy.
• There are people’s congresses at lower levels as well.
• Some cases of things getting significant numbers of neg votes and abstentions (but not enough to stop them from going ahead). E.g. 29% on the Three Gorges Dam.
• Voting at subnational people's congresses occasionally offer real surprises, e.g. who gets voted in as governor.

Section 2.11 on the judicial system – basically about how it's tightly controlled by the CCP

147 PLA is less politically neutral than most armies – officially loyal to CCP. Institutions for party discipline operate within the PLA.

• 148 “Loyalty of the PLA to the civilian leadership in the party and the state since 1989 appears to be assured and unchallenged”
• Political and ideological training is a major party of military training
• PLA officials see collapse of Soviet army after collapse of Soviet communist party as a warning – makes them likely to keep supporting the party

148 Central Military Commission is the highest military leadership organ, e.g. setting doctrine and coordinating defense policy. Few hundred officers and officials.

152 Ministry of National Defense doesn’t do much – basically military diplomatic affairs

3 Political leadership

154 Highest political organ = Politburo Standing Committee. Headed by general secretary of the CCP (“party leader”, currently Xi Jinping).

3.1.1 “normal mode and crisis mode in decision-making”. Various points:

• Deng Xiaoping quickly went from being praised in Western media to being presented as a butcher. [Note: Presumably when he started acting in ‘crisis mode’, i.e. ordering the Tiananmen massacre, but I don’t remember reading this section.]
• Xi took West by surprise when he came to power: market-oriented reforms, strong anti-corruption measures, domestic oppression
• Heilmann claims that politics is generally focused on compromises, whereas in crisis there’s much more centralized decision-making and rule by decree
• Xi Jinping has done moves towards centralization even in normal times: “transition to a crisis mode of governance”

P169 Leading Small Groups. Xi uses them much more than his predecessors. They’re for important decisions in overlapping areas, e.g. Foreign Affairs. Xi made himself in charge of most of them, assuming individual authority that had previously been more consensus-focussed.

180 Xi more media savvy than his predecessors, e.g. trying to make his speeches engaging and doing photo ops.

181 Frequent use of “informal methods of exercising power [...] that are contrary to the official rules in the party constitutions [etc.] are fundamental features of governance in the PRC.”

183 Xi to some extent constrained by previous leaders. E.g. needing Jiang Zemin’s approval in order to do a corruption investigation into a former standing committee member – would otherwise have been seen as an attack on political legacy.

184 Formation of internal factions within the CCP is not permitted - e.g. can’t set up informal clubs for functionaries from the same region.

• In contrast, the system creates patronage networks; in order to get on the cadre list you need a top cadre to support you (and get loyalty in return). Majority of the top Chinese officials have spent years working as personal secretaries to older officials in leading positions.

184 Influential political figures disproportionately studied at Tsinghua.

185 Some crackdowns on “cliques” after Xi came to power

189 Formal process for getting input from chambers of commerce, foreign companies, etc. on draft legislation. These are generally about changing wording rather than overall shape of the legislation. Also informal lobbying – not regulated and highly prone to corruption.

189-190 Think tanks

• Types:

• Sub-units of the Chinese State Council and ministries
• University research institute
• Private consultancies

• Many of the researchers have access to decision-makers and are involved in task forces that are set up to formulate new government programs or regulation
• Researchers at important Chinese thinktanks are popular targets for lobbyists

4 Governing China’s economy

193 At least four factors explain rapid economic growth since 1980s:

• Move towards more of a market system
• Opening to the global economy
• Workers switching from agriculture to industry and city jobs (with mass migration)
• Investment from the state esp into infrastructure.

197 Economists are doubtful of the reliability of Chinese official GDP statistics (but there has been a lot of economic growth). Seems like this is largely due to technical inadequacy of the National Bureau of Statistics + local governments “dressing up” their reporting.

201 China’s economy was always more decentralized than USSR, e.g. with a lot of economic planning done at local levels. Seems to have made market-driven reforms easier.

203 Discussion of how CCP implemented economic reforms in a way that avoided it losing power. E.g. doing experiments at a local level first, and keeping old governance structures while introducing new ones, with the new ones gradually replacing the old ones.

Type 1: Oligopolistic/monopolistic structures

Type 2: State-owned, often by local governments. Non-strategic sectors. A lot of competition with private and foreign companies

Type 3: Private companies with close government links due to their strategic importance. But they’re not just an arm of the Chinese government.

Type 4:  Private companies that compete in nonstrategic markets. Some of them are big in domestic and international markets.

210 Mechanisms by which state bodies influence companies:

• State as owner (so e.g. having control over which managers get appointed). This happens at national and local level.
• CCP cadre system. CCP deciding who gets appointed in state-owned enterprises + companies with gov links.
• Financing: Hard for state-owned and privately owned companies to get capital without government approval. (There are formal and informal mechanisms for this)
• Industrial policy: Issuing licenses + state-directed mergers and restructurings give a broad range of options to influence the strategies and day-to-day operations of private companies.
• Regulation. Often politically motivated (e.g. who gets the license to raise capital)
• State as key customer (via procurement from government and SOEs). These procurement decisions exert a lot of influence in terms of which companies / technologies become firmly established in a given market.

213 Political control of financial system

• System dominated by state-owned banks
• State preventing growth of capital markets so that savings disproportionately go into the banking industry. (Similarly, China’s equity and bond markets primarily satisfy financing requirements of state institutions and SOEs)
• Exchange rate controls + capital controls to prevent savings going abroad

215 Stock markets first introduced as an experiment by local governments in Shanghai and Shenzhen (with them competing against each other)

Stock markets are dominated by SOEs and prices are influenced more by regulatory intervention that specific successes/failures of the companies – leading to a lot of speculation.

220 Joining WTO in 2001

• Key factor for integrating China into global economy and promoting competition and deregulation in the domestic economy
• Premier Zhu used necessity of making changes to join WTO to overcome domestic resistance to economic reform. (And also pointed to this domestic resistance to get concessions during WTO negotiations)

220 Various ways in which China maybe breaks WTO rules + has mercantilist policies, e.g. protecting domestic businesses. Author thinks the mercantilist thing is often overstated.

227 “[With the economic reforms] the Chinese party-state became a kind of administrative market in which political power was systematically exchanged for economic benefits. Such ‘cadre capitalism’ became the most obvious expression of the organizational decay of the CCP. Consequently, the party leadership regards the containment of corruption in China as a 'fight to the death’ for the CCP. (The term ‘corruption’ is defined here in broader terms than in Western societies, covering not only political corruption, misappropriation of public funds, and illegal acquisition of state property but also moral and personal transgressions)”

P228 Good summary of informal negotiations between companies/people in gov

Types of corruption in PRC:

• “Predatory” corruption - systemic theft of public/private assets
• “Dividend collection: political actors demanding a share of company profits in exchange for growth- and stability-enhancing administrative services. This can support growth.

232 High-profile cases of corruption at the highest levels in mid 2010s – reduced CCP credibility

233 “The ‘deep structure’ of China’s political economy (as opposed to the ‘surface structure’ of official economic and political institutions) is characterized by informal exchange networks among those who are politically well-connected and thus enjoy access to the discretionary approval and allocation powers of the party-state decision-makers. These underlying informal structures prevent the emergence of a more open form of economic and political competition and they also undermine the efficacy and credibility of the official laws and regulations. [...] The informal rules of politics, business, and commerce work in parallel with the official rules, either by changing them, canceling them, or supplementing them.”

235 Different varieties of capitalism in different provinces\\

238 GDP per capita is three times higher in Jiangsu (wealthiest province) than Guizhou (poorest)

5 Governing China’s society

245 Chinese gov claims to have prevented 400 million births between 1980s and 2000 with one child policy (though this might be an overestimate)

246 Hukou system: controls access to education, healthcare, urban dwellings, previously also food rations. Lowers migration to cities. As of 2014, the system is planned to be reformed.

252 Activists/critics in China generally have specific demands (e.g. safeguarding legal rights of specific groups) rather than calling for political transformation

• “Since 2008 the Communist Party leadership has left non doubt that it intends to nip in the bud any and all form of cross-regional political activism.”

257 A fifth of the Chinese population were classified as migrant workers in 2014 - though only about a third are in a different province

• Migrant workers from countryside (used to?) have worse rights that urban citizens

270 Some social organizations / associations that do lobbying

• “In practice lobbying is a standard part of everyday life for Chinese business associations. The article on the protection of private property that was added to the constitution in 2004, for example, was the outcome of a quietly persistent campaign waged for years by the national umbrella organization of private entrepreneurs”

271 Party controlled trade unions. These are meant to cooperate harmoniously with company managers and the state to promote economic growth, so often don’t side with workers! Independent trade unions are prohibited, though there are unauthorized strikes.

272 International NGOs have precarious legal status. Easiest way is to cooperate with official partners e.g. universities.

277 Various mechanisms by which CCP has strong control of the media, despite a lot of media being in private sector

296 “There are currently no real signs of attempts to mobilize the population to overturn the existing order, with the exception of underground movements in Xinjiang and isolated radical religious organizations.” No segment of the population could clearly organize a broad enough movement to bring down the CCP. Maybe industrial workers, given that they keep trying to set up autonomous workers’ councils?

6 Policy making: Processes and outcomes

298 Political scientists generally think that communist/socialist autocratic political systems are inflexible and unable to adapt. This doesn’t apply well to PRC - “a system which is unexpectedly adaptable and versatile in many policy areas, particularly with regard to economist and technology policy”

Crisis mode of policy making

• 301 “Even in democratic political systems, a crisis mode is deemed to be an exceptional political context during which far-reaching legislative decisions-regarding the use of budgetary funds or security forces, for instance-can be made and implemented much more quickly than during normal times. Indeed, in China the ‘crisis, war, and mobilization’ mode is not implemented within the context of constitutional rules; instead it essentially causes the decision-making and leadership systems to shift to a different framework for political action and interactions.
• China’s political system informally becomes much more centralized during crisis with high concentration of personalized power. Triggers include natural disasters, terrorist attacks, financial crises, leadership conflicts / crises within the party.
• Massive ad hoc “mobilization” for big projects and repressive measures (without legal foundation).

302 CCP sees the ability to set long-term dev priorities and to ‘concentrate forces’ on national projects as one of the greatest strengths of the PRC political system.

302 Five year plans evolve during (and after) the 5 years

303 “Decentralized reform initiatives and local reform experiments capable of becoming nationwide political programs have been of utmost importance for China's economic development since 1978. They are part of a special methodology for policy experimentation that is able to open up a wide range of unexpected opportunities for action in a cumbersome, bureaucratic, and authoritarian system of government.”

• Three stages: experimentation zones, expanded geographically in an informal way, after a long period of evaluation formalized at the national level
• Special Economic Zones are a good example
• “Almost without exception, the most important policy reform measures – ranging from rural decollectivization and management reforms in the SOEs and the setting up of stock markets to reforms in the rural healthcare system - originated from decentralized experiments [...]”
• Initiating local experiments is done at a local level, but identifying successful experiments + expanding them done centrally

306 Central gov tries to channel the leading cadres in party and state bodies to overarching objectives (e.g. the fight against corruption, maintaining social stability)

• Cadre promotions are based on meeting goals (both for specific role + overarching objectives) set centrally. E.g. attracting foreign investors, expanding infrastructure. Goodharting on these goals leads to bad consequences, e.g. with arrest quotas.

307 Party can go into “campaign mode” to get around lethargic bureaucracy: “falls back on direct mobilization via the party hierarchy, state media, and grassroots organizations.”

• SARS, Sichuan Earthquake + anti-corruption campaign examples.
• “In all of these cases, conventional bureaucratic, organizational instruments were combined with political pressures, ideology and media campaigns, inspection teams sent from party HQ, and ad hoc disciplinary measures. In its campaign mode, the CCP has at its disposal the opportunity to push through its political will even when it faces lethargic, reluctant, or corrupt administrative departments at lower levels of government.”
• (A bit more detail is given on how this works)
• These mobilization campaigns seem to have been successful in fight against serious wrongdoings and crises (smuggling in 1998, SARS in 2003) but ineffective for improving ongoing administrative and legal tasks (e.g. combating counterfeiting).^[2]
• Analogy of campaigns as “reserve capacity” that can be extreme but only for a limited period.

309 “With respect to national policy formulation, China has become a considerable expertocracy; the political leadership routinely farms out the protracted processes for internal consultations and for reaching compromises to dedicated task forces assembled from a mix of top officials and a large number of experts in the leading fields, some with and some without links to the government”

• [Additional vague points about gov including a lot of expert input from outside government]

“In the field of policy advice provided by think-tanks, the following actors can be identified”

• Bodies within ministries
• State think tanks that are not controlled by a given ministry (so less influenced by ministerial interests)
• Non-governmental think tanks (financed by state/private/international sources). More independence from government (but maybe influenced by other lobbies)

311 Gov does (unpublished) polls of the general public as an early warning mechanism for dissatisfaction / possible unrest. Limited to subnational levels that provide most public services.

311 Talks a bit about the role of individual policy entrepreneurs

338 “China’s budgetary policy is characterized by an imbalance in the allocations of public funds between the central gov on the one hand and subnational governments on the other. Because local govs do not receive sufficient task revenue for their costly tasks, they depend on extra-budgetary financing mechanisms. Consequently, they raise capital for infrastructural investments via local-government financing platforms.”

• [These financing mechanisms are technically companies because subnational governments are not allowed by Basic Law to be in debt]

[342ff On infrastructure policy and the high speed rail network]

[380ff on Cybersecurity policy but it’s not clearly relevant to most AI governance things]

[390ff “Mega-projects: China’s South-to-North Water Transfer Project”]

• Seems only really relevant to infrastructure megaprojects

7 Perspectives on China’s political development

399 China’s political order has changed considerably from the totalitarianism of the Mao era (when CCP functionaries and party organs enjoyed practically limitless control over economic and social life) to a “fragmented authoritarianism” in which centralized intervention by the party only takes place during exceptional periods of “crisis mode” governance (see Chapter 3).

401 Factors that support power of CCP leadership

• Improvement in living standards
• Loyalty to the regime by a large part of the new economic elite
• Outward appearance of unity among the party’s top leadership
• Maintenance of civilian control over the military by the party leadership
• Defense of the party’s monopoly on power through an extensive and proliferating surveillance and policy system
• Widely shared patriotic/nationalistic sentiments among officials and the general public, allowing the party to portray itself as the guardian of China’s national dignity

402 “China’s rulers today carefully use dictatorial means of repression to target specific groups or individuals rather than large segments or entire classes of the population as they did in the past. Western discussions of Chinese politics often revert to familiar narratives, such as “the oppressors versus the oppressed” or “the party-state versus civil society.” These narratives, however, explain only a small part of Chinese political dynamics today.”

403 “Perhaps the greatest challenge to the Chinese party-state is the communicative-discursive component of power in today’s digital society. Despite the country’s tight rein on what citizens can access on the Web, interactive digital media are a potentially disruptive libertarian force that can challenge state institutions and influence public opinion. The “demystification” of politics by revealing the ordinariness or corruption among those in power, particularly at the lower levels of government, is something that has been revealed by social media in China. Interactive digital media thus represent a fundamental challenge to Communist rule in China, and the government has taken active steps to control the modern media and to exploit the Internet to present its own agenda.”

Decentralized policy-making by local authorities can mitigate issues caused by central government errors, but Xi Jinping's centralization of policy-making is diminishing this buffer, reducing China's government's ability to adapt and innovate, and negating the distributed intelligence system established by Deng Xiaoping.

• 406 “In times of political or economic stress, decentralized policy making by effective local authorities helps to compensate for blockades, political errors, or failed reforms on the part of the central government. Yet Xi Jinping’s centralization of policy initiative is weakening this all-important buffer against crises and limiting the Chinese government’s adaptive and innovative capacities. In effect, overcentralized decision-making abolishes the advantages of the system of distributed intelligence and local initiative that Deng Xiaoping had purposively crafted in the 1980s and 1990s.”

China's political system's greatest weakness is its lack of political variability and diversity, with no possibility for political competition or change in the ruling party. The Xi–Li administration's intolerance for critical political views and open debates limits the ability to detect and respond to early signs of crises, potentially undermining system stability.

• 406 “The greatest systemic weakness in terms of the resilience of China’s government system is its lack of political variability and diversity. Political competition and peaceful change in the ruling party are not possible in the Chinese political system. Open debates on the underlying shortcomings of the political system are rare and are only allowed within strict confines. Critical political views, and those who spell them out, are much less likely to be tolerated today in the inner policy-making circle of the Xi–Li administration than they were during previous governments. These restrictions make it more difficult to notice any early signs of impending crises that might threaten the system and to be able to respond to them in a timely manner with measures to reinforce stability.” [Related risks around centralization, e.g. that if the central govt loses credibility, there’s no other part of gov with credibility]

P425 “Implications for international interactions with China” - doesn’t say much other than that Western attempts to change China through trade and multilateralism haven’t done much

• “Any demand or hope in America or Europe to guide China in the direction of Western-style democracy from the outside is unrealistic and should be removed [...] External pressures, such as the threat of sanctions, lead to nationalistic displays of solidarity within China and actually tend to strengthen the authority of the Chinese political leadership rather than to result in local demands for greater liberalization.”
• Calls for cooperating with China on areas of shared interest, e.g. terrorism

[End of book]