Winter 2014

The University of Chicago

Political Science 27815/37815
Politics and Public Policy in China

Instructor: Professor Dali Yang

Class hours: 10:30- 11:50AM TTh Lecture/discussion
Pick Hall 016
Additional graduate section: 10:30-11:50AM, Pick 506 except for first week.

Email: daliyang@uchicago.edu; Telephone: 773-702-8054

Office Hours: Wednesday 4-6pm, Pick 422A or by appointment
Teaching Assistants: In Hyee Hwang, inhyee@uchicago.edu; office hours TBA
Bogdan Popescu, bgpopescu@uchicago.edu; office hours TBA Commented [AL1]:

Friday, Pick Hall 428

Course Outline
Bogdan Popescu: 12:00-1:00pm
In Hyee Hwang: 1:00-2:00pm
As the world’s most populous country and second largest economy, China wields considerable
weight globally but also stands out for its non-democratic political system. This course has two goals.
First, it examines political institutions and political behavior in China since the Communist takeover of
power at the end of the 1940s. It emphasizes how institutions have been shaped and reshaped and the
importance of leadership, with special attention on the tensions and challenges of political development.
Second, it considers various issues of public policy and governance, including the role of the Communist
Party, state-society relations, the relationship between Beijing and the provinces, development and
corruption, population and environment, and the role of the armed forces in society. The course looks at
many of these issues from a comparative perspective and introduces a variety of analytical concepts and
approaches.

Requirements

The course is conducted in lecture/discussion format. The amount of readings is substantial and
students are required to have read the assigned readings before coming to class and are required to
participate in discussions in class. Students are also expected to keep up with current events in China.

Assignments and quizzes:

Two short quizzes (5th/9th week). Commented [AL2]: Quizzes Thursday of 5th and 9th week

Two short essays, five pages each, that engage with key topics/themes on the syllabus. You
should start with syllabus readings and may expand to additional readings on the syllabus and
occasionally other readings. For example, you can discuss the propaganda system by answering some
brief questions: What is the Chinese propaganda system? Is it still effective? What are the key challenges?
For each of such essays, please state at the start what are the questions who are answering and also
provide bibliography/references. The first essay should be on a topic covered in the first 4 weeks and at
the end of the fourth week. The second essay should be on a topic covered in the 5-9th weeks and
Commented [AL3]: First essay due Tuesday of 5th week?
submitted by the end of the eighth week. Thursday? Or Friday of 4th or 5th week?
Commented [AL4]: for undergrads, write a policy paper
Long paper: 1. Undergraduate students are required to write a paper on a key public policy issue (~15 pages on approved topic)
facing China (prior approval by the instructor or a TA is required; guidelines will be posted on chalk). 2.
Graduate students are required to write a research paper of no more than 25 pages in lieu of the policy
analysis. You are required to submit a topic for approval by the end of the fourth week. Commented [AL5]: Final paper due week after last class;
schedule topic for approval onto todoist

The grades are distributed as follows: short quizzes, 40 percent (20 each); essays 30 percent (15
each); final paper, 30 percent.

A separate graduate section will meet on Fridays at 10:30am except for the first week.

Readings: The following books are on order at the Seminary Co-op Bookstore. Some of the readings on
the syllabus are available online or on chalk or via electronic journals/resources at lib.uchicago.edu.
Assuming the continuing availability of these resources online, it is your responsibility to gain access to
them; however, please report any problems with access.

Dali Yang, Calamity and Reform in China. Stanford University Press, 1996. Paperback
Dali Yang, Remaking the Chinese Leviathan. Stanford University Press, 2006. paperback.
Roderick MacFarquhar, ed., The Politics of China: Sixty Years of the People’s Republic of China. Third
ed. Cambridge University Press, 2011. Paperback.

Highly recommended: China: A Century of Revolution (video; online). Portions may be shown in class.

Online Resources: PRC timeline at: http://www.china-profile.com/history/hist_list_1.htm

Works of Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) at http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/

Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping at http://www.people.com.cn/english/dengxp/home.html

In addition to major newspapers, you may find the following useful for staying up-to-date:
China Daily: www.chinadaily.com.cn
China Leadership Monitor: http://www.chinaleadershipmonitor.org/
Sinocism China Newsletter https://sinocism.com/

Schedule

Week 1. Introduction [January 7/9; same pattern for following weeks except Week 10] Graduate section
on Fridays

1A: Introduction

Benjamin Elman, "Political, Social, and Cultural Reproduction via Civil Service Examinations in Late
Imperial China." Journal of Asian Studies vol. 50, no. 1 (February 1991): 7-28.

Tang Tsou, “Interpreting the Revolution in China: Macrohistory and Micromechanisms,” Modern
China, Vol. 26, No. 2. (Apr., 2000), pp. 205-238.

Stuart Schram, “Mao Zedong,” in Encyclopædia Britannica.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/363395/Mao-Zedong

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1B. Mao in Power: From the Takeover of Power to the Anti-Rightist Campaign

Frederick Teiwes, “The Establishment and Consolidation of the New Regime, 1949-1957”, in
MacFarquhar, chapter 1.

Dali Yang, Calamity and Reform in China, chapter 1.

For further reading, Mao Zedong, “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the
People,” February 27, 1957.

Mao: “BEAT BACK THE ATTACKS OF THE BOURGEOIS RIGHTISTS” July 9, 1957.

No graduate section for first week.

For further reading: Philip Short, Mao: A Life. New York: Henry Holt & Company.
2001. For more scholarly works, see Frederick Teiwes, Leadership, Legitimacy, and
Conflict in China (Sharpe, 1984) and Politics and Purges (Sharpe 1993). Contrast
Teiwes with Avery Goldstein, From Bandwagon to Balance-of-Power Politics (Stanford, 1991),
57-133. Also note: Franz Schurmann, Ideology and Organization in Communist China
(California, 1968).

Week 2. Mao in Power: The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution

2A. The Great Leap Forward and Famine

Dali Yang, Calamity and Reform in China, chapters 2-3.

Kenneth Lieberthal, “The Great Leap Forward and the Split in the Yan’an Leadership,” in MacFarquhar,
chapter 2.

For the record:

Mao, Speech at Moscow Celebration Meeting (November 6, 1957).

Read some of Mao’s speeches to get a sense of Mao’s style during the Great Leap Forward at
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-8/index.htm

For further reading: Roderick MacFarquhar, Timothy Cheek, and Eugene Wu, eds., The Secret Speeches
of Chairman Mao: From the Hundred Flowers to the Great Leap Forward (Council on East Asian Studies,
Harvard, 1989). And Roderick MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution (Columbia, various
years).

2B. The Cultural Revolution

Harry Harding, “The Chinese State in Crisis, 1966-1979,” in MacFarquhar, chapter 3.

Dali Yang, Calamity and Reform in China, chapter 4.

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Circular of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution (May 16, 1966). http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/classics/mao/cpc/cc_gpcr.html

CCP CC, “Resolution on certain questions in the history of our party since the founding of
the People’s Republic of China,”
http://www.marxists.org/subject/china/documents/cpc/history/01.htm

Graduate Discussion:

James Kai-Sing Kung and Shuo Chen, “The Tragedy of the Nomenklatura: Career Incentives and
Political Radicalism during China's Great Leap Famine,” American Political Science Review 105: 1
(February 2011): 27-45.

Dali Yang, Huayu Xu, Ran Tao, “A Tragedy of the Nomenklatura? Career Incentives, Political
Loyalty, and Political Radicalism during China’s Great Leap Forward.” Journal of Contemporary
China, in press, forthcoming in 2014.

For the Record:

Mao: Talk at the First Plenum of the Ninth Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party April 28,
1969. http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/classics/mao/sw9/mswv9_83.html

For further reading: Hong Yung Lee, The Politics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (California, 1978);
Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolution. Harvard University Press, 2006;
Andrew Walder, Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement, Harvard University Press, 2009;
Jung Chang, Wild Swans.

Week 3. From Class Struggle/Autarchy/Revolution to Reform/Opening/Development

3A. The End of the Mao Era, the Politics of Succession and Rural Reform

MacFarquhar, “The Succession to Mao and the End of Maoism, 1969-1982,” in

MacFarquhar, Chapter 4.

Dali Yang, Calamity and Reform in China, chapters 5-6.

Skim: Barry Naughton, “The Third Front: Defense Industrialization in the Chinese Interior,”
China Quarterly, no. 115 (September 1988), 351-386;

3B. From “Thought Liberation” to Tiananmen

Richard Baum, “The Road to Tiananmen: Chinese Politics in the 1980s,” in

MacFarquhar, Chapter 5.

Tang Tsou, “The Tiananmen tragedy: the state–society relationship, choices, and
mechanisms in historical perspective,” in Brantly Womack, ed., Contemporary Chinese
Politics in Historical Perspective, Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. 265-328.

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Graduate section:

Tianjian Shi, “Cultural Values and Democracy in the People’s Republic of China,” China
Quarterly, no. 162 (June 2000): 540-559.

Also Note: Ezra Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China. Harvard, 2011; Barry
Naughton, Growing Out of the Plan (Cambridge); Lowell Dittmer, "Bases of Power in Chinese
Politics: A Theory and an Analysis of the Fall of the `Gang of Four'," World Politics, 31: 1
(October 1978), pp. 26-60; Kenneth Lieberthal and Michel Oksenberg, Policy Making in China
(Princeton, 1988). For general discussions of the reform period, see Richard Baum, Burying Mao
(Princeton, 1994); Joseph Fewsmith, Dilemmas of Reform in China: Political Conflict and
Economic Debate (Sharpe, 1994); Victor Nee and David Stark, eds., Remaking the Economic
Institutions of Socialism: China and Eastern Europe (Stanford, 1989).

Week 4. The Chinese Communist Party/State: Leadership and Institutions

4A. The Party, China Inc.: Political Institutions and Leadership, and the Challenge of
Constitutional Development

Susan Lawrence and Michael Martin, “Understanding China’s Political System,” Congressional
Research Service, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R41007.pdf

Joseph Fewsmith, “Reaction, Resurgence, and Succession: Chinese Politics since Tiananmen,” in
MacFarquhar, Chapter 6.

Hon S. Chan, “Cadre Personnel Management in China: The Nomenklatura System, 1990–1998,”
China Quarterly, no. 179 (September 2004), 703-734.

MacFarquhar,

For further reading, Susan Lawrence, “China’s Political Institutions and Leaders in Charts,”
Congressional Research Service, Nov. 2013, at https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R43303.pdf;
www.china.org.cn; The PRC Constitution and amendments:
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/constitution/constitution.html; THE CONSTITUTION OF THE
PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA 1975
http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/classics/mao/cpc/constitution1975.html; David Shambaugh, China's
Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation. University of California Press, 2008; Richard McGregor, The
Party; John Garnaut, The Rise and Fall of the House of Bo.

4B. The Military and Government

You Ji, “The PLA and Diplomacy: unraveling myths about the military role in foreign policy making,”
Journal of Contemporary China, September 26, 2013.

Yang, Remaking the Chinese Leviathan, pp. 3-8; Chapter 2，4，5.

Graduate Section:

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Bruce Dickson, “Who Wants to Be a Communist? Career Incentives and Mobilized Loyalty in
China,” China Quarterly, (Dec 2013), pp. 1-27.

Shih, Victor, Christopher Adolph and Mingxin Liu,2012, “Getting Ahead in the Communist
Party: Explaining the Advancement of Central Committee Members of China”, American
Political Science Review, Vol.106 No.1, 2012, pp.166-187.

Optional: Frank Pieke, “Marketization, Centralization and Globalization of Cadre Training in

Contemporary China,” The China Quarterly, Volume 200, December 2009, pp 953-971.

For further reading: China National Defense White Paper

Week 5. Propaganda in the Internet Age

5A. Propaganda, Media and internet

David Shambaugh, “China’s Propaganda System: Institutions, Processes and Efficacy,” China
Journal, no. 57 (2007): 25–58.

Daniela Stockman and Mary Gallagher. “Remote Control: How the Media Sustain Authoritarian Rule in
China. Comparative Political Studies; Volume 44, 2011;

Nele Noesselt, “Microblogs and the Adaptation of the Chinese Party-State’s Governance
Strategy,” Governance, August 1, 2013, doi:10.1111/gove.12045

Optional:

King, Gary, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E Roberts. 2013. How Censorship in China Allows
Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression. American Political Science Review
107, no. 2 (May): 1-18. Copy at http://j.mp/LdVXqN

5B. The Challenge of Corruption

Yang, Remaking the Chinese Leviathan, Chapters 6-7.

Mayling Mirney, “Decentralization and Veiled Corruption under China’s “Rule of Mandates”’,
World Development, 53 (Jan 2014), 55-67.

Reports on the new red nobility from Bloomberg news, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal (TBA);
Updates on current leadership’s anti-corruption efforts.

First Quiz

Week 6. Central and Local Relations; Local Development and Governance

6A. Beijing and the Provinces

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Yang, Remaking the Chinese Leviathan, Chapter 3.

Christine Wong and Richard Bird, “China’s Fiscal System,” in Loren Brandt and Thomas
Rawski, eds., China’s Great Economic Transformation. Pre-publication version available.

Ran Tao, Fubing Su, Mingxing Liu, and Guangzhong Cao, “Land Leasing and Local Public
Finance in China's Regional Development: Evidence from Prefecture-level Cities,” Urban
Studies, published online 11 March 2010.

For further reading:

Pierre Landry, Decentralized Authoritarianism in China: The Communist Party's Control of
Local Elites in the Post-Mao Era, Cambridge University Press, 2008.

6b. Local Governance

Xin Sun, Travis J. Warner, Dali L. Yang and Mingxing Liu, “Patterns of Authority and
Governance in Rural China : Who’s In Charge? And Why?” Journal of Contemporary China,
Vol. 22, No 83, September 2013, 1-22.

Graeme Smith, “The Hollow State: Rural Governance in China,” The China Quarterly, no. 203
(2010), 601-618.

Ethan Michelson, “Public Goods and State-Society Relations: An Impact Study of China’s Rural
Stimulus,” in Dali Yang, ed., The Global Recession and China’s Political Economy, Palgrave
Macmillan, 2012.

Graduate section: Debate on local accountability

Lily Tsai, “Solidary Groups, Informal Accountability, and Local Public Goods Provision in Rural
China,” American Political Science Review, 101, no. 2 (May 2007).

Informal Accountability, Socially Embedded Officials, and Public Goods Provision in Rural China: The
Role of Lineage Groups

J Chen, N Huhe - Journal of Chinese Political Science, 2013 - Springer

Week 7. The Struggle over Law and Order

7a. Stability Maintenance and Social Protests

Alice Miller, “Dilemmas of globalization and governance”, in MacFarquhar, Chapter 7.

Xi Chen, “The Rising Cost of Stability,” Journal of Democracy 24:1(Jan 2013): 57-64.

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China Labor Bulletin, “Unity is Strength: The Workers’ Movement in China 2009-2011,”
http://www.clb.org.hk/en/files/share/File/research_reports/unity_is_strength_web.pdf.

Ching Kwan Lee and Yonghong Zhang, “The Power of Instability: Unraveling the Microfoundations of Bargained
Authoritarianism in China ,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 118, No. 6 (May 2013), pp. 1475-
1508.

7b. The Struggle over the Rule of Law

Carl Minzner, “China’s Turn Against Law,” American Journal of Comparative Law (2011).

Joseph Fewsmith, “Debating Constitutional Government,” China Leadership Monitor, no. 42

(2013), http://www.hoover.org/publications/china-leadership-monitor/article/158566

Teng Biao, “The Sun Zhigang Incident and the Future of Constitutionalism:
Does the Chinese Constitution Have a Future?,” CRJ Occasional Paper (December 30, 2013),
http://www.law.cuhk.edu.hk/research/crj/download/papers/2013-tb-szg-constitutionalism.pdf

Dali Yang, Remaking the Chinese Leviathan, Chapter 8.

For further reading: Dali Yang, “Economic Transformation and Its Political Discontents in
China,” Annual Review of Political Science, no. 9 (2006), pp. 143-164; Yongshun Cai, “Local
Governments and the Suppression of Popular Resistance in China,” The China Quarterly (2008),
193: 24-42; China Labor Bulletin, “A Decade of Change: The Workers’ Movement in China
2000-2010” at
http://www.clb.org.hk/en/sites/default/files/File/research_reports/Decade%20of%20the%20Work
ers%20Movement%20final_0.pdf

Week 8. Social, Health, and Environmental Policy

8a. Social, Education, and Health Policy; Population Policy

Kam Wing Chan, “The Household Registration System and Migrant Labor in China,” Population
and Development Review 36:2 (2010): 357-364.

Qin Gao, S Yang, S Li, “The Chinese Welfare State in Transition: 1988–2007,” Journal of Social Policy,
2013.

Feng Wang, Yong Cai, and Baochang Gu, “Population, Policy, and Politics: How Will History
Judge China's One-Child Policy?” Population and Development Review, vol. 38 Supplement s1
(Feb 2013), pp. 115-129.

For further reading: Dorothy Solinger, Contending Citizenship in China.

8b. Energy, Environment (and Health)

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Read on growing incidence of and concern with air pollution in China from leading newspapers.
A quick overview of developments in 2013 can be found on Chinadialogue at Olivia Boyd,
“What happened to China’s environment in 2013?” at
https://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/6586-What-happened-to-China-s-
environment-in-2-13-

Guizhen He, Yonglong Lu, Arthur P.J. Mol, Theo Beckers, “Changes and challenges: China's
environmental management in transition,” Environmental Development, 3 (July 2012), 25–38.

Alex Wang, The Search for Sustainable Legitimacy: Environmental Law and Bureaucracy in
China, 37 Harvard Environmental Law Review 365 (2013)

For further reading:

Yuyu Chen, Avraham Ebenstein, Michael Greenstone, and Hongbin Li, “Evidence on the impact
of sustained exposure to air pollution on life expectancy from China’s Huai River policy,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 110 no. 32 (August 6, 2013).

Week 9. Nationalism, Separatism, Federalism (?), “One Country, Two Systems”

9a. Taiwan’s Political Development, Hong Kong & Macau

Chu, Yun-han, and Jih-wen Lin. "Political Development in 20th-Century Taiwan: State-Building,
Regime Transformation and the Construction of National Identity." The China Quarterly 165
(Mar. 2001).

Bruce Jacobs, “Wither Taiwanization? The Colonization, Democratization and Taiwanizatoin of

Taiwan,” Japanese Journal of Political Science 14:4 (Dec 2013): 567-586.

Yinxuan Huang and Patrick Overeem, “A Battle for Values: Hong Kong and Its Constitutions,”
Asian Journal of Public Affairs, 5:1(2012).

Optional: Tianjian Shi, “Cultural Values and Political Trust: A Comparison of the People's Republic of
China and Taiwan, Comparative Politics Vol. 33, No. 4 (Jul., 2001), pp. 401-419.

9b. Nationalism and Its Discontents

Lucian Pye, “How China’s Nationalism Was Shanghaied,” Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs,
no. 29 (January 1993), 107-133.

Suisheng Zhao, “Foreign Policy Implications of Chinese Nationalism Revisited: the strident
turn,” Journal of Contemporary China, vol. 22 (2013),

Optional: Wenfang Tang & Benjamin Darr, “Chinese Nationalism and its Political and Social
Origins,” Journal of Contemporary China, 21:77 (2012), 811-826
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Jessica Weiss, “Autocratic Signaling, Mass Audiences and Nationalist Protest in China,”
International Organization, Forthcoming,

2nd Quiz

Graduate Section:
TBA

Week 10. Ramifications; [Tuesday; reading period]

10A. Prospects and Competing Visions

** Note especially how reform plan adopted by the Third Plenum of the Eighteenth Central
Committee is implemented. Follow reports on the annual plenary session of the National People’s
Congress set to open on March 5.

Some background reading:

Xiaoying, Wang "The Post-Communist Personality." The China Journal (Jan. 2002): 1-18.

Henry Rowen, “When Will the Chinese People Be Free? Journal of Democracy 18:3 (July 2007),
pp. 38-52; and comments by Minxin Pei and Dali Yang.

Graduate Session: Presentations of Draft papers

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