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> The party hierarchy outranks the state one. In other countries, the ministers of finance and foreign affairs (government jobs) are usually the most important

by rdtsc 9y ago

> The party hierarchy outranks the state one. In other countries, the ministers of finance and foreign affairs (government jobs) are usually the most important ones after the president or prime minister. In China, they are not even in the top 25. Neither man is a member of the Politburo, let alone its inner sanctum, the Politburo Standing Committee. Formally, the People’s Liberation Army is controlled by the party, not the government. It was interesting to read. Some countries have an official "balance of powers" defined in the Constitution. But even authoritarian or dictatorial regimes have an informal balance of powers. In the old Soviet Union they pretty much had the Politburo, the army and KGB. They kind of kept each other in check in strange way. Wonder where the business interests fit in the China's balance of powers. Do large companies bribe the government officials or go through the party to get things done and how do they interact in general.

mortenjorck 9y ago
I never really understood the relationship between the party and the state in China, but this article cleared up a lot. Having a better grasp of that relationship also makes this development all the more unsettling: > No less important, the parliament will approve what looks like a new administrative branch that merges elements of the party, government, police and judiciary into a powerful organisation called the National Supervision Commission. This will incorporate the party’s discipline-enforcement body but work closely with the courts and report to the legislature—ie, there will be no separation of powers. It will be able to interrogate, search, detain and punish any official, whether from the party or the government bureaucracy, in cases involving corruption, violations of ethics and ideological deviation. It sounds like any state check on the power of the party that existed before will be effectively neutered by this commission.
- rdtsc 9y ago
  I have seen in this on other countries. They have corruption, it is widespread. So what do the do? Well, of course have a new corruption fighting entity that combines elements from judiciary, executive (including police) and legislative branches. Soon enough, this becomes the new most corrupt entity. Because they monitor and catch lower level corrupt officials, who once caught, now have to pay much higher price to get off the hook.
adventured 9y ago
> Do large companies bribe the government officials or go through the party to get things done and how do they interact in general. For about ~15 years before Xi fully consolidated power, that's how things routinely worked. It was run almost entirely on a bribery to get things done approach, in the business sphere. Xi has moved the system/party on to new goals, with the business realm no longer having the same high order position that it previously did. I wouldn't want to be Jack Ma or Pony Ma in the environment that's being setup now. Alibaba and Tencent will eventually be too large for Xi's liking, if that's not already the case. Australia's former PM, Kevin Rudd, has an excellent write-up on all of this (he has a particularly strong background regarding China): https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-03/emperor-xi-s-china-is-done-biding-its-time https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-03/emperor-x...
- wahern 9y ago
  > Xi has moved the system/party Because Xi has circumvented several of the most important limitations (term limits, seniority) on party and state leadership, there is no system anymore. AFAIU, since Mao died, ultimate power was vested in the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC). Cycling out of leadership posts after two terms was simultaneously both the concrete recognition and reflection of where ultimate power was truly vested. The bribery was an artifact of how power was shared in the PSC, and how the members jockeyed to maintain a balance of power. At a high level it wasn't corruption, per se, but the system through which the PSC members could exert influence when they weren't seated as the President, Chairman of the Central Military Commission, etc. It effectively operated like the checks & balances of Western institutions. If a PSC member opposed a policy preferred by the President, those backchannels to the party base and to industry was how they could push back, and ensured the posted leaders always had to acquiesce, to some degree, to the PSC members. In as much as there was corruption, well that's the price you pay for not having a transparent system of governance with an independent civil service and independent judiciary without concentrating too much power into the hands of a (hopefully) benevolent dictator. The problem is that all the senior leaders from the Maoist era are gone. The norms of the PSC were instituted intentionally to avoid the reemergence of Maoist extremism. This generation doesn't appreciate the critical importance of the power-sharing norms within the PSC. They think they can have their cake and eat it too: preserve the one party Communist system and provide streamlined, efficient governance, without instituting democratic, rule-of-law reforms. They apparently don't appreciate the fact that once the PSC is effectively dominated by a single individual, then the one party system is de facto extinguished--the party becomes subservient to a single individual. More importantly, like many people they don't appreciate the fact that whether in democracy or single-party rule (which has a sort of internal democracy), some amount of organizational inefficiency is the price you must pay to keep power from centralizing. Maximum organizational efficiency can only be achieved in a dictatorship because that's the only way, theoretically, to maximally minimize transaction costs. But over the long-term history has shown that optimizing for short-term efficiency is a really bad idea and it tends to result in very inefficient long-term outcomes.

by rdtsc 9y ago

mortenjorck 9y ago

I never really understood the relationship between the party and the state in China, but this article cleared up a lot. Having a better grasp of that relationship also makes this development all the more unsettling: > No less important, the parliament will approve what looks like a new administrative branch that merges elements of the party, government, police and judiciary into a powerful organisation called the National Supervision Commission. This will incorporate the party’s discipline-enforcement body but work closely with the courts and report to the legislature—ie, there will be no separation of powers. It will be able to interrogate, search, detain and punish any official, whether from the party or the government bureaucracy, in cases involving corruption, violations of ethics and ideological deviation. It sounds like any state check on the power of the party that existed before will be effectively neutered by this commission.

rdtsc 9y ago
I have seen in this on other countries. They have corruption, it is widespread. So what do the do? Well, of course have a new corruption fighting entity that combines elements from judiciary, executive (including police) and legislative branches. Soon enough, this becomes the new most corrupt entity. Because they monitor and catch lower level corrupt officials, who once caught, now have to pay much higher price to get off the hook.

adventured 9y ago

> Do large companies bribe the government officials or go through the party to get things done and how do they interact in general. For about ~15 years before Xi fully consolidated power, that's how things routinely worked. It was run almost entirely on a bribery to get things done approach, in the business sphere. Xi has moved the system/party on to new goals, with the business realm no longer having the same high order position that it previously did. I wouldn't want to be Jack Ma or Pony Ma in the environment that's being setup now. Alibaba and Tencent will eventually be too large for Xi's liking, if that's not already the case. Australia's former PM, Kevin Rudd, has an excellent write-up on all of this (he has a particularly strong background regarding China): https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-03/emperor-xi-s-china-is-done-biding-its-time https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-03/emperor-x...

wahern 9y ago
> Xi has moved the system/party Because Xi has circumvented several of the most important limitations (term limits, seniority) on party and state leadership, there is no system anymore. AFAIU, since Mao died, ultimate power was vested in the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC). Cycling out of leadership posts after two terms was simultaneously both the concrete recognition and reflection of where ultimate power was truly vested. The bribery was an artifact of how power was shared in the PSC, and how the members jockeyed to maintain a balance of power. At a high level it wasn't corruption, per se, but the system through which the PSC members could exert influence when they weren't seated as the President, Chairman of the Central Military Commission, etc. It effectively operated like the checks & balances of Western institutions. If a PSC member opposed a policy preferred by the President, those backchannels to the party base and to industry was how they could push back, and ensured the posted leaders always had to acquiesce, to some degree, to the PSC members. In as much as there was corruption, well that's the price you pay for not having a transparent system of governance with an independent civil service and independent judiciary without concentrating too much power into the hands of a (hopefully) benevolent dictator. The problem is that all the senior leaders from the Maoist era are gone. The norms of the PSC were instituted intentionally to avoid the reemergence of Maoist extremism. This generation doesn't appreciate the critical importance of the power-sharing norms within the PSC. They think they can have their cake and eat it too: preserve the one party Communist system and provide streamlined, efficient governance, without instituting democratic, rule-of-law reforms. They apparently don't appreciate the fact that once the PSC is effectively dominated by a single individual, then the one party system is de facto extinguished--the party becomes subservient to a single individual. More importantly, like many people they don't appreciate the fact that whether in democracy or single-party rule (which has a sort of internal democracy), some amount of organizational inefficiency is the price you must pay to keep power from centralizing. Maximum organizational efficiency can only be achieved in a dictatorship because that's the only way, theoretically, to maximally minimize transaction costs. But over the long-term history has shown that optimizing for short-term efficiency is a really bad idea and it tends to result in very inefficient long-term outcomes.