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China's Communist Party: Atrophy and

Adaptation. David Shambaugh. Berkeley, Los
Angeles and London: University of California
Press, 2008. xiv + 234 pp. \$39.95; £23.95. ISBN
978-0-520-25492-3

Joseph Fewsmith

The China Quarterly / Volume 195 / September 2008, pp 691 - 692

DOI: 10.1017/S030574100800088X, Published online: 05 September 2008

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S030574100800088X

How to cite this article:

Joseph Fewsmith (2008). The China Quarterly, 195, pp 691-692 doi:10.1017/
S030574100800088X

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 691

Book Reviews
China’s Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation
DAVID SHAMBAUGH
Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2008
xiv + 234 pp. $39.95; £23.95
ISBN 978-0-520-25492-3 doi:10.1017/S030574100800088X

An earlier generation of scholars paid a great deal of attention to the workings of the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP). A. Doak Barnett’s study of Cadres, Bureaucracy,
and Political Power in Communist China, Robert Scalapino’s Elites in the People’s
Republic of China, and John Lewis’ Leadership in Communist China remain classic
works in the field. In more recent years, attention has focused more on elite politics,
economic reform or local-level politics, as research opportunities have opened up in
those areas. Attention on the CCP as an organization has never gone away
completely, as the works of John Burns, Hong Yung Lee, Zhiyue Bo and Li Cheng
suggest, but recently there has been an upsurge in interest in the party and how it
functions – and how it might be changing – as the books edited by Kjeld Erik
Brødsgaard and Zheng Yongnian (Bringing the Party Back In [East Asia Institute,
National University of Singapore, 2004] and The Chinese Communist Party in
Reform [Routledge, 2006]) suggest. David Shambaugh’s new book, China’s
Communist Party, is a welcome addition to this literature.
Shambaugh’s book differs from some of the recent literature in that his eye is on
the CCP itself, or, more specifically, the CCP’s response to the collapse of
Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, rather than on the party’s
relationship with other institutions in society, such as the military and the State
Council, or on technical but critical issues such as the party’s management of cadres
or the party’s efforts to institute reforms at the local level. Shambaugh’s interest is
focused more narrowly on the efforts of the CCP to learn from the failure of
Communism elsewhere as well as from the successes and failures of other, non-
Communist parties, such as the PAP in Singapore and socialist democratic parties in
Europe. The core thesis in Shambaugh’s book is that the CCP undertook a long
series of analyses of the collapse of Communism and the experience of other parties,
and then applied the lessons to the CCP itself, particularly in Jiang Zemin’s 2001
decision to admit private entrepreneurs into the party and the 2004 ‘‘Decision on the
Enhancement of the Party’s Governing Capacity.’’ Shambaugh’s conclusion is that
although there are signs of the atrophy of the CCP, there are also instances of its
adaptation to changing global circumstances. In general, Shambaugh concludes that
the CCP has been applying the lessons learned from abroad ‘‘proactively’’ (p. 103)
and at least enhancing its chances for survival in a world seemingly hostile to the
continuation of socialist systems. He thus parts company with those he regards as
pessimists about the CCP’s future.
There are many good aspects of this book. Certainly, Shambaugh’s discussion of
Chinese views of the collapse of the Soviet Communist Party is the most
comprehensive in English. Shambaugh’s attention to revision of the CCP’s ideology
is very useful, as is his attention to the efforts to rebuild the party organizationally.
Shambaugh is persuasive in his contention that the CCP has been thinking deeply
about how to sustain the party in power.
At the same time, there are curious omissions. For instance, there is very little
attention to politics, either central or local. Chinese evaluations of the failure of the
# The China Quarterly, 2008
692 The China Quarterly, 195, September 2008, pp. 691–718

Soviet Communist Party (CPSU) were certainly filtered through political lenses, with
different interests seeing what they wanted to see, yet only tantalizing bits of this (on-
going) process of study cum prescription come through. The politics of analysing the
collapse of the CPSU were particularly apparent in the 1990–1992 period, as
conservatives and reformers argued about the direction China should take. The
analysis of the failure of the CPSU was no mere academic exercise in which
consensus was reached and lessons appropriately applied, but rather a process in
which contending forces found support for their views on what had allegedly
happened in the Soviet Union. Similarly, efforts to apply the lessons learned to the
CCP were inevitably framed in terms of what political leaders thought was necessary
and feasible in China’s context, just as resistance to reforms have been based on
different interpretations of what is possible and desirable in the Chinese context. In
short, more attention to the domestic context in which conclusions were being drawn
from the Soviet experience and how they were being applied to China would be
useful.
Shambaugh’s interest is in the CCP since the failure of socialism in Eastern Europe
and the Soviet Union, rather than in a broader understanding of the history and
institutions of the CCP. History would have been useful. The CCP has been facing
crises literally since its birth. One of the remarkable things about the CCP is that it
has evolved mechanisms to evaluate the dangers, assess praise and blame, and move
forward. It would be interesting to know how the CCP’s efforts in the wake of the
collapse of the CPSU resemble or differ from similar stock-taking in previous crises.
One would also like to know more about simple things like the economics of the
CCP: Where does it get its funding, how does the development of the private
economy affect this, and how has the very substantial increase in central funds
affected incentives that maintain, or erode, the CCP’s authority? Similarly, some
effort to assess the success or failure of the CCP’s efforts to reform itself would have
been welcome.
Having said that, Shambaugh’s book is a very welcome addition to our
understanding of the CCP and how it functions.

JOSEPH FEWSMITH

Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China

ANNE-MARIE BRADY
Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto and Plymouth: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2008
xiv + 299 pp. $75.00
ISBN 978-0-7425-4057-6 doi:10.1017/S0305741008000891

This is the first book-length study of the Chinese propaganda system and ‘‘thought
work’’ since Daniel Lynch’s After the Propaganda State (1999), although there have
been a number of more recent studies concerning Chinese media and journalism.
Brady’s new volume is the best and most current study on the subject, and is a
welcome addition to our understanding of the evolving party-state in China.
Its principal strength lies in her explication of the bureaucratic labyrinth of the
propaganda system, although there are a number of minor errors in her description.
For example, the main Propaganda Department headquarters on Chang’an Avenue
in Beijing is not ‘‘heavily guarded’’ nor is it ‘‘a highly secret department’’ (p. 13); the
Central Propaganda Department does not control appointments through the
nomenklatura system (pp. 16, 114–115) as this is the responsibility of the CCP
Organization Department; nor does it control the Central Party School or