Social Transformation and State Governance in China

China’s 30 years of reform and opening up have undergone significant social and economic transformations, and state governance has faced with a series of transformation crises. Scholars both at home and abroad have been divided over the nature of the transformation crises facing the nation as well as the potential consequences of such crises. The primary controversy lies in whether or not China’s current political system is trapped in a governance crisis.

China’s political reform, which began in the 1980s, is a historical event that has had a huge impact on political development in contemporary China. This political reform movement is a change driven by specific political leaders under certain historical conditions. Twenty years later, this political reform is still moving forward in its original form. The political changes brought about by the reform—the characteristics, ways and methods, and their astonishing persistence—put forward new research topics for the existing theoretical system of political development and political change.

China’s reform and opening up has been an ongoing twenty-year effort. Over the course of these two decades, China has maintained rapid economic development and relative political stability, but many new socio-political issues have also arisen. The country’s reforms have been a matter of widespread concern from the outset. The achievements of China’s two decades of economic reform appear to have been widely recognized, but the progress made in political reform has been less unanimously praised and recognized.

The choice of the goals in political reform and the design of policy options are made with different purposes and considerations in mind. The policy selection process is filled with political interactions and games between the parties. However, the legitimacy, influence and authority possessed by all parties cannot be equal. The dominant party often can take advantage of superior political resources to lead the direction of political reform, to decide on the choice of reform policies, and translate their policy preferences and realistic political needs into substantive policies and actions. In China’s current constitution system, the Chinese Communist Party is the only legitimate ruling party and is therefore in a position of leadership in the political life of the country. The party’s political line and guiding ideology play a leading role in the political development of the country. In the on-the-ground operation of the political system, the Party’s central leadership is in fact the dominant head of the political reform process from beginning to end. In order to safeguard the long-term peace and stability of the country and the steady implementation of reform policy, the central leadership has explored and chosen a top-down progressive step by step political reform, under the conditions of many uncertainties in the reform.

After entering the twenty-first century, China has been experiencing a rapid social-economic transformation and there are major challenges in its ability to govern the country. The proper and firm promotion of the reform of the political structure is an important choice for enhancing the ability of state governance and overcoming transition crises. Judging from the experience of state governance in most transitional societies, political system reform is often accompanied by uncertainty. The transformation towards greater democracy, as directed by the regime change, is now even more fraught with political risk. This is especially the case with democratization driven by major economic and social crises. The ideological debate over the types of basic political systems in the face of major realities in the modernization of the country’s governance system and governance capacity does not seem to provide us with any more knowledge and feasible policy proposals. Political system reform has never been carried out independently. It is bound to be influenced by the constraints of the social and economic structure, and consequential changes to that social and economic structure. Actors in the system must not only consider the political impact of these structures and changes, but also consider the uncertainties in the political outcomes that result from reform programs and policies. What can be altered in China’s next political reform? This chapter intends to discuss the following issues: First, it examines the demands and logic of China’s gradual political system reform from the level of cognitive understanding; second, it discusses how the challenge of state governance in the socio-economic transition crisis determines the fundamental purpose and content of the reform of the political system; third, it discusses the adaptability and contents of democratic reform in the existing system; and fourth, it discusses the contents of relevant reforms that should be promoted in establishing a responsive government system.

During the 1980s, the bureaucratic elite in the People’s Republic of China underwent a substantive change in the direction of rejuvenation and professionalization. Since the elite transformation program was introduced at the beginning of the 1980s, the post-Mao leadership invested heavily in the enforcement of this program for a decade.

The experimental reforms of grassroots democracy implemented by local Party organizations have given a second wind to the traditional system of cadre selection and appointment, as well as the personnel management system.

Rural self-governance and the “three rural issues” have become two important topics in the study of China’s rural areas in recent years. Scholars concerned about village self-governance mainly focus their research on the domestic problems of the form and nature of village self-governance, case studies of village elections, the impact of elections on village governance and rural political development.

The social groups in China have greatly expanded both the number and range of activities in recent years with the economic development and changes of social structure. The domestic academia has thus initiated to study the forms, traits and prospects of them. Nevertheless, the research on the new groups of China is either consciously or unconsciously subjected to the optimism perspective which is interpreted by the prevailing Western governance concept and relative theories, no matter on the normative theoretical interpretation on the level of value judgment or on the types and the operational aspects on the level of empirical analysis.

Since the State Council held a working conference on the reform of the administrative examination and approval system in October 2001, stressing the need to speed up reforms in this area, it has become a new hot spot for administrative system reform in China.

In the governance system under China’s unitary administration model, local governments not only have to undertake the overall administration responsibility for the regional development and stability but also have to accept the professional and functional supervision of various departments of the central government.

The reform of the Chinese government management system and the development of the market-oriented economy in China have advanced gradually in due order in over 20 years. Characteristically, China’s traditional economic management system expected the integration of Party work and government work, with the government operating or managing enterprises. The decision-making power in economic operations was highly centralized to the central government. However, since China pursued the policy of reform and opening up, gradual steps have been adopted to carry out a reform that is characterized by the separation of Party from government and of government functions from enterprise management. Efforts have been made to put in place a market-oriented economy and a most suitable government management system with Chinese characteristics.

Under the central government’s emphasis on building a harmonious society and a service-oriented government, China’s rural social welfare system is experiencing an important historical period of transformation and system innovation. Due to the vast territory of China, a large rural population, major regional differences in terms of natural conditions and history and culture, and unbalanced socio-economic development, which have forced the progress of institutional transformation and system innovation to require not only strong policy guidance and administrative promotion by the central government, but also active participation and implementation of the local government.

The emergence and development of policy science in China, which is a new branch of political science, is closely related to the process of making government administration more modern, professional, scientific and democratic. Since China began its reform and opening up, and as government administration has become more modern, policy science has been under development and has become an important branch of political science and of administration and management science. However, since policy science entered China only a short time ago, its development as a discipline and its actual use in the public policy process are still in the early stages, and there are still many problems arising from its immaturity and its weak theoretical and methodological foundation.