Factional Model-making: Open Ideological Conflicts in the Chinese Communist Party

Описание: CSC International Research Webniner Series

The Chinese Communist Party demands all party members, especially party elites, to display a uniform political outlook. However, in reality, before the tightening of Chinese politics under Xi Jinping, the Party had always been manifestly ideologically diverse. In this presentation, I will introduce ‘factional model-making’ as a new analytical framework to describe and explain the open expression of ideological conflicts in the policy process. Factional model-making is a technique by which faction-based party elites manipulated the Party’s work-method of model emulation – a social control device originated in Confucianism – to legitimize ideas and ideologies marginalized in the party line. This presentation will consist of three parts. First, I will survey the history of factional model-making in the Party. Second, I will provide a case study of how the Party’s Left groomed Henan Province’s Nanjie Village into a factional model from the early 1990s through 2010s. Third, I will discuss the suppression of factional model-making under Xi and its possible implications.

About the speakers

Dr Olivia Cheung (DPhil, Oxon) is Research Fellow at the SOAS China Institute, SOAS University of London. She is currently writing two books, one on factionalism and ideology in Chinese politics, another on the Political Thought of Xi Jinping (with Steve Tsang). Her works have appeared in the China Quarterly, Asan Forum, East Asia Forum, Third World Quarterly, South African Journal of International Affairs, St Antony’s International Review, the edited book Non-Western Global Theories of International Relations (Samantha Cooke ed.), etc.

David Kelly (Chair) David leads research at China Policy, with main responsibility for the geopolitics team. Over thirty years his work has ranged widely across issues affecting China’s economic, political, and social institutions. These threads combine in his current work on China’s strategic positioning, political risk and the external impact of domestic policy.