The Return of Ideology by Chen Cheng;

Author:Chen, Cheng;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Elite Commitment and Regime Ideology-Building in China

Given the continuing authoritarian rule of the Chinese Communist Party, it would be tempting to assume overall elite unity in China. But since the early revolutionary days, the CCP political elites in China have never been a homogeneous and united group. Mao himself became the party leader after purging the previous pro-Soviet leadership of the “returned Bolsheviks” and sidelining the Zhang Guotao faction. During much of the Maoist era, factional conflicts over power and ideology featured prominently in elite politics, leading to successive purges of various “cliques” and “gangs.” The catastrophic Cultural Revolution era was characterized by intense and sometimes deadly struggles124 between the radicals supported by Mao and the majority moderates, which decimated political elites and eventually resulted in the victory of the moderates represented by Deng over the radicals represented by the “Gang of Four.” It was later blamed on the “counterrevolutionary cliques” of Jiang Qing and Lin Biao by the Party’s 1981 Resolution.125 The subsequent Deng era witnessed power struggles between the reformers and the conservatives, which partially contributed to the tragedy of the 1989 Tiananmen Incident.126 Against such a backdrop, the post-Deng elite’s commitment to the regime’s ideological projects could not be taken for granted. This section examines major sources of elite division and unity in the post-Deng era in order to assess the elite’s commitment to the regime’s ideological projects.

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