<In the first year> The Composition of China’s Modern State and the Continuation of the Principles of ‘A Concentrated Power’
The purpose of this paper is to find out how the Chinese elite recognized and redefined the “state” in t ...
<In the first year> The Composition of China’s Modern State and the Continuation of the Principles of ‘A Concentrated Power’
The purpose of this paper is to find out how the Chinese elite recognized and redefined the “state” in the process of building a modern state. It mainly looks at the discussion and historical process of the time, focusing on the “power” discourse, and explores the character of the Chinese state combined with these ideological characteristics and the peculiarity of Chinese politics. In China, the concept of ‘state’ has long existed as an entity even before modern concepts were imported. Since the era of Qin-Han(秦漢), the state itself has represented a universal political committee. With the collapse of the traditional dynastic system in the period of transition to modern times, a new conceptualization of the state is sought among the knowledge elite. But the notion of “A Concentrated Power(權力一統)” formed in the existing “Great Unification(大一統)” political structure persisted, and this notion was reinforced amid the failure of the republican revolution and the successive course of another revolution. The unified concept of power and the concentrated orientation to power structure have never changed in Chinese politics. Accordingly, the legitimacy of power was hard to deviate from the logic of moral politics. The idea of one power has also influenced China’s national view, symbolizing that the absolute power of the state has an exclusively balanced view, monopolizing only one “public interest”. The modern China has monopolized and justified power while securing authority with its moralized principles, and politics has thus been captured by the state.
<In the second year> The conception and limitations of the China model through the discussion of “Political Meritocracy”
In this paper, we first looked at the main contents and issues of “Political Meritocracy” raised by Daniel A. Bell, and the critical discussions surrounding it. The “Political Meritocracy” discourse is already emphasized in real politics beyond academic discussions, and is actively accepted as part of the Chinese Communist Party's new governance system. This paper also analyzed what contradictions Bell's Political Meritocracy has in terms of ‘political legitimacy’ and ‘systemic’ features, and then analyzed the theoretical and practical limitations of what Bell claims to be “Vertical Democratic Meritocracy”. It also examined how traditional ideas and institutions were selectively used in Chinese real politics, and finally, it was assessed that the Chinese Political Meritocracy logic was characterized by the ‘Scriptural-style Ideology’, which inherent the difficulty of universal theoreticalization.
<In the third year> The CCP's Social Construction Initiative and the History of Social Subjects
Recently, the Chinese Communist Party(CCP) is reorganizing its social structure under the name of ‘social governance(治理)’ and is building a society that ‘builds, manages, and enjoys together(共建共治共享)’ based on the party building at the lower level. The key to completing the dream of ‘modernizing governance’ lies in social construction through expansion of social participation and the establishment of a voluntary social subject. This paper recalls the past history of social construction of the 100-year-old CCP, it also analyzes what kind of society is currently being built and what characteristics appear in terms of ‘social subject’. Over the past hundred years, China has gone through two social construction models: a mass society based on the ‘mass line(群众路线)’ and a ‘civil society(公民社会)’ emphasizing a sense of law and rights. Currently, the social construction model that the New Era(新时代) is aiming for is ‘people's society(人民社会)’, and mass line is being emphasized again as a specific way to realize it. The mass line is now combined with the goal of ‘the people are above all else(人民至上)’, from the existing party's organizational principles and the working attitude of party officials, and is being upgraded to the main principle of state governance. It also emphasizes the blood relationship between the party and the people, and the unity of the family(家) and the state(国), and it is characterized by injecting a new “the concept of family-and-state(家国观)” that leads to the people, the Chinese, and the state. The ‘people’ formed based on traditional patriarchal views is a subject based on emotional attachment and ethical responsibilities, and has the characteristics of an ‘ethical community’ that connects the family's emotion with the state authority. These ‘people’ subjects are different from the ‘people’ that they tried to form during the construction of socialism, and they are also ‘people for social construction’ rather than ‘social subject’.