Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
These two books represent major statements about the nature and workings of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). For all its centrality in Chinese politics, the CCP as a political institution has been surprisingly understudied. Scholars have focused on elite conflicts over power and policy, on state-society struggles, on local politics, and on when and how China might make a transition to democracy. Few have made the institutional dynamics of the CCP their research topic, especially since the crackdown of 1989, and also because of difficulties in accessing materials and interviews from those at the heart of the party apparatus. I hope that others follow the lead of Bruce J. Dickson and David Shambaugh.
Wealth into Power is a particularly rare kind of scholarship. In 2003, Dickson published Red Capitalists in China, based on a 1999 sample survey, interviews, and documentary research. Remarkably, the book reviewed here resampled the same areas in China and used basically the same questionnaire in 2004 as in 1999. This second set of results obviously allows for temporal comparisons, as well as the opportunity for further interviews and documentary research. (Also remarkably, and it is hoped, setting a precedent, Cambridge University Press, saw merit in allowing Dickson to revisit, in a profound way, a book published five years before.)
Dickson takes issue with those who see the rise of the private sector specifically, and economic development more generally, as preparing the way for political change/democratization in China. But instead of challenging the CCP, he argues that entrepreneurs have become partners with the CCP in promoting development. The private sector has been co-opted and incorporated, and channeled to serve both as a leading sector for development and as an increasingly important pillar of party control. He argues that local CCP and business elites share ever more similar interests, personal ties, and common attitudes. The result, he suggests, is that a decentralized "crony capitalism" is a more likely result of the development of the private sector than is a Chinese bourgeoisie demanding democratization.
Dickson's survey was undertaken in two counties in each of four provinces in China. It was not a random sample, and while the survey was undertaken by the...