The dominant view concerning the rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is that it is simply a matter of time before it comes to an end. This view has been dominant since the pro-democracy protests in 1989 and has only been strengthened by the increasing number of protests in recent years. However, the Chinese Communist Party has continued to remain in power throughout this period and its rule appears to be secure in the short-to medium-term. As the twentieth anniversary of the military suppression of the pro-democracy demonstrations approaches, this book explains how the Chinese Communist Party has maintained its authority since 1989. It provides a detailed analysis of the Party’s discourse emphasising stability in the post-Tiananmen period, analysing the government’s propaganda in order to show how this discourse has been used by the Party to legitimate its authority. The interdisciplinary nature of this book makes it relevant to a number of different academic disciplines including Asian studies, China studies, international relations, politics and sociology.

Since the victory of the 1949 revolution the incumbency of the Chinese Communist Party has been characterized by an almost relentless struggle to legitimize its monopoly on political power. During the Mao era, attempts to derive legitimacy focused primarily on mass participation in political affairs, a blend of Marxist and nationalist ideology, and the charismatic authority of Mao Zedong. The dramatic failure of the Cultural Revolution forced the post-Mao leadership to discard these discredited paradigms of legitimacy and move towards an almost exclusively performance based concept founded on market economic reform. The reforms during the 1980s generated a number of unwelcome but inevitable side effects such as official corruption, high unemployment and significant socio-economic inequality. These factors culminated ultimately in the 1989 demonstrations in Tiananmen Square and throughout China. Since Tiananmen the party has sought to diversify the basis of its legitimacy by adhering more closely to constitutional procedures in decision making and, to a certain extent, by reinventing itself as a conservative nationalist party. This probing study of post-communist revolution Chinese politics sets out to discover if there is a plausible alternative to the electoral mode or if legitimacy is the exclusive domain of the multi-party system.

Why did the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) not follow the failure of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union? This book examines this question by studying two crucial strategies that the CCP feels it needs to implement in order to remain in power: ideological reform and the institutionalization of leadership succession.

Ray Hartman provides an intellectual history of Chinese legitimacy as it was understood by the young Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Providing insights into CCP leaders' self-perceptions regarding their own legitimacy, he shows how that conception dictated the Party's policies regarding the people's welfare, the economy, and military strategy.

This book attempts to provide an overview of social and political changes in Chinese society since the global financial crisis. Rapid economic development has restructured the setup of society and empowered or weakened certain social players. The chapters in this book provide an updated account of a wide range of social changes, including the rise of the middle class and private entrepreneurs, the declining social status of the working class, as well as the resurgence of non-governmental organisations and the growing political mobilisation on the internet. The authors also examine the implications of those changes for state-society relations, governance, democratic prospects, and potentially for the stability of the current political regime.

As China moved from a planned to a market economy many people expected that China’s political system would similarly move from authoritarianism to democracy. It is now clear, however, that political liberalisation does not necessarily follow economic liberalisation. This book explores this apparent contradiction, presenting many new perspectives and new thinking on the subject. It considers the path of transition in China historically, makes comparisons with other countries and examines how political culture and the political outlook in China are developing at present. A key feature of the book is the fact that most of the contributors are China-born, Western-trained scholars, who bring deep knowledge and well informed views to the study.

If the history of modern China was written as a book, its author would be accused of losing touch with reality. During the twentieth century, China underwent two revolutions, a number of wars, endured a radical and destabilising form of communism and then hurried quickly towards a system of open market economics whilst remaining under the control of a nominally communist party. Currently the fastest growing economy in the world with an increasingly sophisticated and expanding military, China is widely expected to emerge as the world's next superpower, eclipsing the United States in the not too distant future.However, not everything is going smoothly for Beijing. Unemployment rates are spiralling, inequality is rife and official corruption at all levels remains an Achilles heel for the Chinese Communist Party, despite Xi Jinping's best endeavours to wipe it out. Worst of all, environmental degradation is at such a serious level that it threatens the success of the Chinese economy and the stability of Chinese society.Against this scarcely believable backdrop and based on a series of lectures, seminars and research conducted by the author, Mao's China and Post-Mao China captures the dynamics, dynamism and disasters of Chinese politics since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. This advanced textbook identifies three key themes that have underpinned the post-revolutionary era, the so-called 'three Rs' — Revolution, Recovery and Rejuvenation — and is essential reading for anyone interested in the politics of modern China at the undergraduate and postgraduate level