Political Implications of China's Technocracy in the Reform Era 9819929768, 9789819929764

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Gang Chen

Political Implications of China’s Technocracy in the Reform Era

Political Implications of China’s Technocracy in the Reform Era

Gang Chen

Political Implications of China’s Technocracy in the Reform Era

Gang Chen East Asian Institute National University of Singapore Singapore, Singapore

ISBN 978-981-99-2976-4 ISBN 978-981-99-2977-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-2977-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

For the peaceful development in East Asia

Contents

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 New Technocratic Trends in China and the World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Comparison of Technocracy in Authoritarian and Democratic Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Impacts Upon Domestic Governance and International Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 2

9 16

2 Evolution of Technocracy in P.R. China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Mao’s Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Technocracy in Deng, Jiang and Hu’s Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Technocracy in Xi’s Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 Implications of Reviving Technocracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

19 19 23 28 34 36

3 Rising Stars from Strategic Industries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 China’s 20th Party Congress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 The Rise of the “Aerospace Clique” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Technocrats in Other Industries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 An Expanding Techno-security Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 The Limits of Chinese Technocracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

37 37 41 44 46 51 53

4 Technocracy and Future Leadership Succession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Models of Chinese Elite Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Technocracy Versus Xi-in-Command: A New Model of Career Advancement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Technocrats in Future Power Reshuffling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

55 55

4

58 64 68

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Contents

5 Domestic and International Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 Domestic Political Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Economic Implications and the Rise of Military–Industrial Complex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Self-Reliance and Inward-Looking Policies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 International Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

71 71 75 83 89 93

6 Discussion and Conclusion: Technocracy and the Future of CCP . . . . 95 6.1 Authoritarian Resilience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 6.2 Elite Politics and Succession Issue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 6.3 China’s Military–Industrial-Technological Complex . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 6.4 Security Dilemma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 4.1

Proportions of PSC Members Trained as Engineers (1992–2022). Source compiled by the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Key Word Counts in the Political Report at 18th, 19th and 20th Party Congress. Source Compiled by the Author . . . . . . The Share of Technocrats among Full Members of the CCP Central Committee (%). Source Cheng Li, Brookings Institution (The Wall Street Journal 2022) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

25 47

59

ix

List of Tables

Table 2.1 Table 2.2 Table 2.3 Table 3.1 Table 3.2 Table 3.3 Table 5.1 Table 6.1

Technocrats’ Representation in High-Level Leadership (1982–98) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tsinghua Graduates in the 16th CCP Central Committee . . . . . . Educational Backgrounds of Politburo and Its Standing Committee Members after the 19th Party Congress . . . . . . . . . . . Factional Alignments in the PSC since 2012 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20th CCP Politburo and Its Standing Committee . . . . . . . . . . . . . China’s Technological and Scientific Progress (2016–2020) . . . . Companies with Direct or Indirect Ties with the PLA and PAP (Wortzel 2000) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Party Congresses and Power Succession in the Reform Era . . . .

26 29 31 38 39 49 79 103

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Chapter 1

Introduction

Technocracy is a “system of governance in which technically trained experts rule by virtue of their specialized knowledge and position in dominant political and economic institutions” (Fischer 1990). Initiated by engineers like William Henry Smyth (1919) and Howard Scott, the technocracy movement arose in the early twentieth century to advocate scientific methods to solve social problems. Even before the term technocracy was first coined probably by Smyth (1919), political ideas regarding governance by technical experts had been promoted by other theorists such as Henri de Saint-Simon, whose vision of industrial society, a vision of pure technocracy, was a system of planning and rational order in which society would specify its needs and organize the factors of production to achieve them (Bell 1974). Henri de Saint-Simon, an influential French political theorist popularising the word “industrialism” to designate the emergent society in the late-eighteenth century, posits that an industrial society should be organised by “new men”, engineers, builders, planners, who would provide the necessary leadership (Bell 1974). Raymond Aron redefines industrial society along the axis of economic growth, implying that technocrats capable of boosting the economy should be designated to important government positions. Originated from people’s belief in the invincibility of industrial technology and human knowledge after the industrial revolution, the technocracy concept’s early usage was often associated with industrial democracy—a movement to integrate workers into decision making through existing firms or revolution. The rise of technocracy movement in the West coincided with the burgeoning of communism in the East, which believed that the Marxian concept of proletarian technocracy links the experiences of workers through the industrial revolution with the philosophies of praxis (Smith 1988). Global enthusiasm about technocracy subsided at the end of the Cold War, when the planning and social engineering models, assuming to be the essence of technocratic projects, failed in the Communist world. Nevertheless, with the rise of China ruled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and mounting populist challenges facing many regimes (Urbinati 2014), technocracy has gradually entered the political and policy debate again (Esmark 2017). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 G. Chen, Political Implications of China’s Technocracy in the Reform Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-2977-1_1

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1.1 New Technocratic Trends in China and the World Technocrats are officials with technical training and related occupational backgrounds and they perceive many governance problems as being solvable, often while proposing technology-focused solutions. The definition emphasises three elements: education, occupation and position (Li and White 1990). In China, a technocrat is defined as a person who has specialised science and technology (S&T) training, holds a professional occupation and has a leadership position. This book counts only Chinese officials who earn a degree in science or engineering or subsequently practice in the field. It does not include those who specialized in economics and finance. His/her contribution to politics and career advancement may depend, at least partially, on his/her expertise. Once promoted to senior positions, however, Chinese technocrats are often doing jobs that are not related to their S&T training or professions. In pre-reform (Mao’s) time, technocracy was not salient in China’s elite politics, as most leaders of the CCP were soldiers, peasants, workers and other members of the lower-middle class when they joined the communist movement. In the early reform (Deng Xiaoping’s) time, technocrats with engineering backgrounds like Li Peng, Hu Qili and Jiang Zemin got promoted to top positions in the CCP Politburo Standing Committee. During Jiang Zemin’s and Hu Jintao’s tenure in the 1990s and 2000s, respectively, more technocrats were promoted—an increasing proportion of them had educational backgrounds in the social sciences rather than in engineering and the natural sciences. After Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, more technocrats with working experiences in military and aerospace industries, or training in social sciences, especially economics, were promoted to key positions. At the CCP’s 20th Party Congress in October 2022, Xi Jinping, 69, started his third term as the CCP general secretary and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), stacking the Politburo and its Standing Committee (PSC) with his loyalists. Many technocrats with backgrounds in military, aerospace industries, public health, environmental engineering or other strategic industries were promoted into the Politburo. Ma Xingrui, Zhang Guoqing and Yuan Jiajun all rose through the military and aerospace industry, while Yin Li is a highly experienced health professional. Li Ganjie studied nuclear safety and worked as an engineer at the National Nuclear Safety Administration before. Liu Guozhong majored in artillery system fuse design and manufacturing, and has a graduate degree from the Harbin Institute of Technology. Chen Jining earned his PhD degree in civil and environmental engineering at Imperial College London. Their promotions reflected the rising priority of industrial innovation and national security in the Xi administration. In most parts of the world outside China, the technocracy movement was shortlived and did not have much staying power, but the concept of government by engineers and experts proved influential, often bolstered by progressive reformers in modern societies. The concept of technocracy, advanced by intellectuals such

1.1 New Technocratic Trends in China and the World

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as Thorstein Veblen in the United States and Walter Rathenau in Germany in the early twentieth century, revived after World War II despite widespread critiques of the dehumanizing character of a society dominated by technology, technique, and technical rationality. In the long debate about the conflict and dichotomy between technocracy and democracy (Meynaud 1969; Bell 1974; Radaelli 1999; Dargent 2014; Berman 2022), technocracy has been often evoked as the antagonist of liberal democracy, which emphasizes more upon fairness, justice, and equality rather than the competing concern for efficiency. Gradually the division has been blurred when the technocracy became the inevitable trend in many advanced economies often confronted with complicated modern or post-modern challenges. Once technocracy is incorporated into democratic values and institutions, it actually plays a complementary role in offsetting the limitations of the democratic processes in multi-level polities, with the European Union and Latin American countries as typical examples (Radaelli 1999; Dargent 2014). Nevertheless, most technocrats in these places are actually “econocrats” with expertise on economics and finance, who do not meet the Chinese technocrats’ academic requirement in hard sciences. New worldwide challenges like the global financial crisis, pandemics, climate change and cybersecurity have further consolidated the technocrats’ positions in the executive branches of governments as well as non-governmental institutions in most countries. In the twenty-first century, national representative democracy has been weakened due to the imperatives of global economic integration. The technocratic elements have expanded dramatically in scope and gradually infiltrated into the national governments or even supra-national organizations. The conventional technocratic dimension was circumscribed to efficiencyenhancing policies, while during the crisis, it has been extended to issues with clear distributional consequences (Sanchez-Cuenca 2017). Technocratic institutions of this kind are distributed throughout state bureaucracies, where they advance policy on economics, national security, military, immigration, education, environment, and much else besides (Cole 2022). Besides daunting challenges that make technocratic governance more appealing, increasing disappointment with the political outcomes from democracy is another source of the technocratic attraction. Party politics and representative democracy are increasingly incapable of finding effective solutions to economic downturn, climate crisis and populist flare-ups, reigniting people’s enthusiasm about technocratic managerialism. Technocratic governance has become a pervasive feature of economic management in both advanced democracies and authoritarian states. In democracies, “econocrats” are supposed to take economic and fiscal policy away from fractious parliamentary politics, moving it towards the realms of technical administration. Such “depoliticisation” process does not happen in the one-party state of China when a large number of cadres with S&T expertise are promoted to key positions. Although the long-existing factional politics with the CCP has also been supressed to some extent by the rising technocracy, all the technocrats are CCP members who

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support the top leadership’s ideology and policies. They tend to consolidate the CCP’s governance through modern S&T rather than conventional political means, so the promotion of technocrats will only strengthen the authoritarian one-party rule rather than weakening it.

1.2 Comparison of Technocracy in Authoritarian and Democratic Systems As an ideological product of the industrial and information revolution, technocratic believers in the Communist and democratic countries share the same thought that industrial technology and human knowledge are key to the solutions to most governance issues. Communism, in Marx’ mind, did not mean simple liberation, but the economics of liberation. In this sense, the problem of technocracy and the corporatist ethos in Marx are part of a broader discursive structure, which links the experiences of workers through the industrial revolution with the philosophies of praxis as they reach from Hegel through Markovic (Smith 1988). According to Marxist orthodoxy, economic democracy is co-equivalent with technocracy, where a managerial group, perhaps periodically rotated by function, properly regulates labor time. In developed Communist society, one need not fear the technocrat, just as one need never fear the conductor of an orchestra (Smith 1988). In reality, however, this Marxian concept of proletarian technocracy has never been applied to the political practices of any authoritarian Communist governments, and in People’s Republic of China (PRC), the group of technocrats has become an indispensable part of political elites, wielding enormous power over the Chinese people and crucial policy making. Similarly, technocrats in liberal democracies and supranational organizations are getting increasingly influential in public policy making and crisis management, but since most of them lack the mandates from democratic voting processes, they are often excluded from top leading positions and therefore subject to decisions made by political office holders. In contrast to China’s full scope of technocratic politics, Western countries often appoint technocrats to handle imminent crisis or risks without letting them govern directly in the vast majority of instances. The core idea of technocracy in a democratic system is that political decision-making is ‘depoliticized’ for efficiency reasons and insulated from the democratic process (Sanchez-Cuenca 2017). In these regimes, experts are insulated from popular and electoral pressures, which allowed for relatively quick and unimpeded implementation of their preferred policies. Nevertheless, different from their peers in non-democratic systems, seldom these people are appointed to state positions to achieve greater capacity than the politicians representing political parties could have. A case in point is Dr. Anthony Fauci, the high-profile U.S. health technocrat during the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. As the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, he provided medical advice to the White House that

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led the country to fight Covid, but he had never held any major cabinet positions or got a seat in the U.S. Congress during his 54 years in government service. In democracies, experts are often appointed as advisers to state leaders during crisis moments, and their views can have direct influences upon decision-making. Yet it’s still the political leader that is mandated to make final decisions or policy changes. In democracies, experts lack independent bases of power accumulated via popular elections, or institutional protections in the framework of certain state apparatus like courts, military forces or the police. They also lack the tenure enjoyed by professional bureaucrats because usually they are merely appointees. Formally, most experts remain highly dependent on politicians for their positions, as they “can be fired in a matter of minutes” (Schneider 1998, 78). In contrast to engineers and technicians that make up the main body of technocrats in an authoritarian state, economic and financial experts are more prominent actors in technocratic democracies. When an authoritarian state is in transition to an open market economy, economic experts tend to wield enormous power not matched by their peers in the pre-reform period. If marketization entails democratization, the salience of economic technocrats will remain even after the market economy system is established. However, if economic liberation does not lead to political democratization, technicians and engineers replace economists as the mainstay of politically influential technocrats in these authoritarian regimes, just like what they did in the pre-reform periods. Since the 1960s, economic technocrats have become important actors in many Latin American countries, especially during periods of neoliberal reform. In Colombia, economic technocrats have been key actors since the late 1950s when President Alberto Lleras Camargo (1958–1962), and more clearly, President Carlos Lleras Restrepo (1966–1970), strengthened the executive branch by appointing experts in several economic institutions. Similarly, experts became top players in Peruvian politics during Alberto Fujimori’s regime (1990–2000) (Dargent 2014). Economic technocrats also remained key policy makers in Chile and Brazil following the countries’ democratic transitions from authoritarian rule in the late 1980s (Silva 2008). The ascendancy of technocratic economic management in democratic systems, notably through central banks, ministries of finance and trade departments, represents the ‘depoliticization’ of policymaking, in particular economic policy, as a result of its insulation from national-level democratic scrutiny. Previously, voters could oust governments whose economic policies they disagreed with, but this settlement has changed as national governments have ‘depoliticized’ policymaking by moving many powers previously in the domain of national legislatures to courts, central banks and supranational institutions—that is, to bodies without electoral mandates. The rationale for this shift is about addressing the challenges of regulating highly technical policy areas in the context of rising populism, for example to make monetary policy more credible and technical, by disconnecting it from partisan political interference. In an authoritarian system, however, such ‘depoliticization’ is unnecessary as the priority of rulers is to strengthen self-reliance on national techno-security capacity rather than being responsive to electorates.

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For a mature market economy governed under a democratic political system, economic inequality, migration, integration, pollution and corruption have become a dominant focus of political contestation, so the growth of economic technocracy is a natural response to the polarized electoral politics through transferring power to ‘independent’ professionals in the socioeconomic realm. In contrast, an authoritarian state always has a security-maximizing goal of building its power and prestige on an increasingly capable and expansive economic and technological foundation. In certain crucial stage of market reform, economists and financial experts are promoted to key positions to lead economic reform and opening up, but once the economic re-institutionalization is over, experts with science and technological backgrounds are to retake those leading positions once granted to economic technocrats. It is often argued that technocracy is mainly distinguished by its absence of ideological commitment. But, in reality, it is deeply rooted in an ideology and grounded upon a strongly meritocratic view of society. Technocracy can become a dominant ideology, as it has done on mainland China and Taiwan (Li and White 1990). Taiwan had shared similar technocratic views with mainland China before its democratization, when the most attractive majors for college applicants were not humanities but engineering. The rising technocracy occurred in the economic transition of Taiwan from an agricultural to an industrial society in the 1970s and 1980s. The authoritarian Taiwan government’s policy was shifting from emphasizing primarily technology imports to emphasizing primarily exports of technology-intensive goods. Meanwhile the island was also experiencing the expansion of higher education and the increase in college graduates. The global technological revolution and increasing integration of the international economy has called for the emergence of technical elites. The study of Taiwan’s technocracy under the authoritarian rule of Kuomintang (KMT) shed light on the driving forces behind the CCP’s promotion of technocrats on the Mainland China. The PRC is encountering similar environmental factors as those faced by Taiwan in the 1970s and 1980s, when technical elites were called to come to KMT leadership. The large number of tech elites in the CCP leadership is also linked to the country’s plans for industrial, technological and military modernisation, as well as to rising educational qualifications among all the party members and the population at large. A contextual difference between the CCP’s technocracy today and KMT’s technocracy before the democratisation of Taiwan is the contrasting geopolitical situation faced by the two parties now and then. Technocracy happened in Taiwan in an international environment of détente between the Western and Eastern camps in the Cold War, while the CCP, under Xi’s rule, is promoting tech elites in the intensifying rivalry with the United States and its allies. The U.S. 2022 National Security Strategy has identified the PRC as the only competitor with the intent and, increasingly, the capacity to reshape the international order (U.S. Department of Defense 2022). In January 2013, the US House of Representatives voted in favour of forming a new select committee dedicated to competing with China. Facing increasing technological sanctions from advanced economies, the

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CCP has been emphasising self-reliance on indigenous innovations for its modernisation strategy. While some Taiwanese technocrats urged large-scale political reforms on the eve of democratisation, Chinese technocrats today are devoted to the built-up of techno-security state that integrates the domestic and external security arenas and emphasises the strengthening of military and security powers to enhance the CCP’s ruling position. The CCP is the largest, and one of the most powerful, political organizations in the world today, and has played a crucial role in initiating most of the economic and technological transformation of the past seven decades in China. This study focuses on the technocracy within the CCP as an institution, trying to assess its durability and adaptability through looking at its institutional and ideological strengths and weaknesses. The book aims to depict major stages concerning the Chinese technocracy’s evolvement and to study key political figures and ideological concepts in the technocratic framework constructed by the CCP over time. Maintaining party discipline and improving cadre management are vital issues for a Leninist party to stay in power. Due to lack of political pressures from opposition parties or institutionalized supervision from civic organization, the ruling CCP has to improve its “ruling capacity” (zhizheng nengli) and meritocracy of cadres through repetitive “party building” (dangjian) processes and institutional reforms. Meanwhile rapid economic development since the reform and open-door policy has created a new socio-economic environment for the CCP. The CCP has consistently reordered its relations with the state apparatus, or the administration, in order to survive in this new environment. China’s successful transition to modern, effective governance is still very much dependent on these changing Party–state relations. Since the CCP–state relations together form the single most important political-institutional infrastructure in China, they are central to all political activities. The CCP’s most powerful instrument in structuring its domination over the state is a system called the “Party management of cadres” (dangguan ganbu), or more commonly known in the West as the nomenklatura system. Based on the the Soviet model, the nomenklatura system gives the CCP a dominant say over personnel decisions of all important government positions. Technocratisation in the CCP is having profound impact upon the party-state governance, as the Party is placing cadres with S&T backgrounds in key government positions. In March 2013, the leading team of the State Council, or the Chinese cabinet, started to be dominated by technocrats including Premier Li Qiang, Executive Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang, Vice Premier Liu Guozhong and Zhang Guoqing. These technocrats will no doubt reshape China’s development and foreign strategies in the next five to ten years. The “Party management of cadres” system is also the most effective means for the CCP to control localism in the country. The Political Bureau and its Department of Organization keep a tight rein over the selection and appointment of provincial Party secretaries and governors. All important provincial leaders and cadres are appointed and managed by the CCP Central Committee. To prevent provincial Party

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secretaries and governors from becoming deeply rooted in locally vested interests, the CCP exercises the so-called “cadre exchange system”. This system allows the CCP to curtail localism. Many technocrats have governance experiences in more than one province. Since S&T cadres spend most of their time doing R&D before transferred to political positions in provinces, they lack the political networking capabilities possessed by professional political cadres and thus are less likely involved in factional politics that may undermine the central authority. The dichotomy between technocrats and political cadres within the CCP has replaced the previous factional conflicts based on regions and individual leaders’ personal networks. Although cadres in both categories are loyal towards the party leadership, they vary in governance style, mentality and policy inclination. Being more obedient and less liberal-minded, technocrats focus on the technical solutions to governance issues rather than looking at policy alternatives of reforming existing institutions. As compared to their technocratic peers, political cadres are good at understanding the pulse of the masses due to their long-time contact with grass-roots communities. While tech elites believe in the power of S&T in keeping grip over the society, cadres with training in humanities and social sciences tend to have empathy over public sentiment and are tolerant of different opinions. In the post-Mao era, the Party successfully shifted its ideological focus from Mao Zedong thought on class struggle to Deng Xiaoping theory on reform and opening-up, then to Jiang Zemin’s “Three Represents,” Hu Jintao’s concept of scientific development, and now to Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. This would not be possible without the nomenklatura system. In different stages, resistance to changes from vested interests were inevitably strong. To counter that, the CCP leadership has to resort to the nomenklatura system to retire, or even forcefully remove, those who have resisted. The system also allows the CCP to select the “right types” of cadres and government officials to implement its modernisation policies. Now specialists from strategic S&T industries belong to this “right type” of government officials favoured by the party leadership. Although the selection and appointment of technocrats are based on meritocratic principles (ren ren wei xian), cadres should also have both political integrity and ability (de cai jian bei) and are ultimately managed by the Party. Hence, the CCP has served as an important facilitator for the state administration to carry out its development policies. Besides cadre management, the CCP also helps the state administration to mobilize resources required for the country’s socio-economic transition. The nomenklatura system presents a typified weak-state and strong-party phenomenon, and this is a dilemma for China. On the one hand, continuing one-party rule stifles the development of strong state mechanisms—a prerequisite for a modern state; on the other hand, without the Party and its apparatus, the state administration is incapable of moving ahead with anything at all, let alone its reformist agenda. With more technocrats joining the government leadership, the Chinese government is emphasising on domestic self-reliance capacities rather than economic growth.

1.3 Impacts Upon Domestic Governance and International Relations

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As Feigenbaum (2003)’s China’s Techno-Warriors indicates, throughout the P.R. China history, there has been a remarkable ideological continuity: Chinese “technonationalism” driven by a core group of scientists and specialists with close ties to the military. Their familiarity with developments outside China and their uniquely efficient organizational structure within the Party drove Chinese advances in space, electronics, and nuclear weapons. In Communist countries, technocrats claim the scientific revolution rightly brings them to power, and that they in return can best serve the interests of the society. In liberal democratic systems, however, technocracy, or ‘rule of experts’, is inspirationally designed around the application of Taylorist principles of productivity. The term gradually shed its association with engineering and planning, and became ever more associated with the fields of economics and law. As a result, the issue has increasingly become whether the institutions governing national and global capitalism offer adequate space to reconcile technocracy and democracy (Weiler 1991) without being undermined by fatal shortfalls in political legitimacy.

1.3 Impacts Upon Domestic Governance and International Relations In modern societies, the concept of technocracy suggests the growing hold of applied natural and social sciences on every sphere of governance, featured with a new ruling group of technological and science backgrounds, a new style of rule, a new dominant ideology and even a new phase of policy making and implementation. Despite its sometimes ambivalent definition, the term technocracy is always tied to both the advance of scientific knowledge and to the ongoing transformation of governmental functions. Technocratic beliefs are largely built upon the modern sociological antecedent in Max Weber’s central concept of rationalization, which has three principal and interconnected historical expressions: industrial capitalism, bureaucratic domination and modern science (Larson 1972–1973). In almost all authoritarian and democratic societies, technocratic tendencies accelerate bureaucratization aimed at functional efficiency, autonomous operation and insulation from populist sentiment. Therefore, technocratization does not necessarily bring about increasing democratization; on the contrary, the growing number of technocrats in a regime can enhance its authoritarian facet and make policy making less responsive towards public demands. Even if technocracy is often superficially associated with bureaucracy to the point of indistinction, it is a particular form of rule that has a deeply antagonistic relationship with both of these more established systems of rule. Political leaders nowadays tend to recruit technocrats and professionals to appease surging populist emotions over policies, but these technocratic teams frequently adopt their own policy preferences, which they advance with relative success, even against the interests of other powerful actors, including their superiors.

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Technocrats with a deep-rooted meritocratic view of society believe that the scientific revolution rightly brings them to power, and that they in return can best serve the public interests. In reality, however, the implementation of experts’ preferred policies in some areas ignore societal demand, slowing down political reforms and altering the distribution of resources among social groups. Sometimes incumbent leaders are informally forced to appoint officials in that policy area with similar levels of training and policy preferences—that endures over time. Generalists to some extent seem more appropriate than narrowly trained specialists to be appointed to key leading positions in the state apparatus, as technocratic leaders sometimes could not evaluate policy options from the proper perspectives of political values. Today, tensions have been building up between experts and laypersons in both authoritarian and democratic regimes, predicted by many to be the characteristic form of conflict in the post-industrial era (Fischer 1990). The rising technocracy in Chinese politics is closely related to the Communist Party’s fixation with modernisation based on science and technology rather than the Confucian tradition of valuing education and scholarship. In ancient China, men who rose to official positions through examination were always generalists, and were neither specialists nor technocrats in a modern sense (Li and White 1990). When Confucius speaks of “finding out”, he is not seeking to explore something new but to rediscover the past. In a society in which historic traditions have the only real validity, influence lies not with the innovators but with those who can guide along established paths (Fei 1953, 67–8). In the history of the PRC, the CCP leadership has been advocating for rapid development of science and technology, and science policy has played a greater role in national politics than it does in many other countries. The rise of technocracy in contemporary Chinese politics is not only attributed to the meritocratic tradition based on civil service exams (keju kaoshi) in ancient China, but also tied to the current authoritarian political system that relies on the top-down cadre promotion approach instead of public elections. The growing number of technocrats in the Party-state reflects China’s transition from Mao’s military institution ruled by warriors to the industrial society ruled by engineers, planners and producers in the reform era. Relatedly, the dominance of engineers and scientists in the early technocratic years of the PRC reflected the available pool of educated cadres, instead of careful selection according to the requirements of leadership positions. Leaders with technocratic backgrounds had brought changes to China’s political landscape since technocrats tended to solve governance issues using technical solutions in an industrialised society as compared to pure politicians and revolutionaries, who were inclined to resort to political, and sometimes populist, options. In an authoritarian state ruled by a single party, technocrats are more likely to reach powerful positions as they do not need to compete with professional politicians for votes from the public. It is often argued that technocracy is mainly distinguished by its absence of ideological commitment, but in reality, its ideology is deeply rooted in and grounded upon meritocracy in society.

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In Xi Jinping’s time, China has moved into a “new normal” era of a slowing economy, driven by more consumption and less on investment, and its service sector has replaced manufacturing to become the largest contributor to gross domestic product (GDP) (Wu 2018). Xi’s “new normal” mentality reflects certain postindustrialisation traits that may have a profound impact upon China’s technocracy in the future. In transitioning from industrial (mass production) to post-industrial (service oriented) society, China’s technocracy has shifted its centrality towards new sciencebased industries like artificial intelligence, aerospace and military technology, public health and medical services, environmental engineering and telecommunications. Politics may not be that important in the post-industrial society. However, the rise of technocrats from aerospace and other military science sectors does not necessarily imply the reversal of the warrior-dominant pre-industrial society, but a transition to a new stage of sustainable military research and development of or greater emphasis on sophisticated weapons (Huntington 1974, pp. 165 and 189). During Deng Xiaoping’s and Jiang Zemin’s era, China’s technocrats were predominantly engineers with physical science backgrounds, while in Xi’s tenure, the appointments of technocrats with security-related S&T expertise underlined Beijing’s growing security concern in the face of tensions with the United States and its allies. In the post-industrial society, there is a shift from property inheritance or political connections towards knowledge as the base of new power; however, what seems crucial is the discerned change in the character of knowledge itself (Bell 1974). The technocratic tendency also manifests the bureaucratisation of China’s politics in the reform era, and in this context, governance becomes an issue focussed less on determining the appropriate direction for society but more on adjusting its institutions and policies to the flows of economic and technological development (Habermas 1973). Nevertheless, as Samuel P. Huntington has highlighted, higher levels of intelligence and knowledge do not necessarily translate into more skilful political judgements and decisions (Huntington 1974, 190). The post-industrial society is clearly a knowledge society in a double sense: first, the sources of innovation are increasingly derived from research and development (and more directly, a new relationship exists between science and technology because of the centrality of theoretical knowledge); second, the weightage of the society— measured by a larger proportion of gross national product and a larger share of employment—is increasingly in the knowledge field (Bell 1974). In 2018, China’s tertiary industry accounted for 52.2% of its total GDP, absorbing 45% of the country’s total employment. Since its foundation in 1949, the PRC has transitioned from Mao’s military society led by warriors to Deng’s industrial society governed by engineers, and then to Xi’s post-industrial society today governed by loosely defined technocrats with expertise on a wide range of S&T issues. For each term of the Politburo in the reform era, CCP leaders have generally been better educated with higher university degrees than

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their predecessors. Such a trend also reflects the growing technocratic tendency in Chinese elite politics that increasingly emphasises knowledge, technology and new science-based industries. Despite the declining number of engineers in the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) in Xi’s first two terms (2012–2022), the CCP has been promoting a large number of technocrats at the ministerial/provincial level, with some joining the Politburo at the 20th Party Congress in 2022. However, in this round of promotion, few were from industries such as petroleum or mechanical engineering as in the past tradition, but increasingly more are from the aerospace, aviation, nuclear, ordnance, computer, biochemistry, telecommunications or other strategic new industries. Behind this new round of technocracy is China’s ambition to apply advanced military technology to civilian fields and integrating the military industry into local economic development. On 22 January 2017, Xi kick-started a new commission to oversee the military and civilian fusion (MCF) development ( junmin ronghe fazhan weiyuanhui) as part of the country’s ambitious military reform programme. With the newly established commission, Xi aimed to develop a military–industrial complex, similar to the United States’ initiative to ensure that the armed forces are modernised commensurate with their rising status in the international arena. To achieve these goals, China has injected vast amounts of resources into military industries and has accumulated highly advanced technology in order to catch up with the United States, and some believe that these might even become the main source of China’s future technological innovation and a leading force for economic growth (Shih 2017). One of the most important technology providers in the integration of military and civilian development is the aerospace industry, which has carried out high-profile megaprojects such as the Lunar Exploration Programme (also known as Chang’e Program) and the Manned Space Programme (Shenzhou Program). In the recent revival of technocracy, Xi has nominated cadres based on their technical expertise outside of the political circles, and these have been referred to as new technocrats, some of whom will assume even higher positions and reshape China’s economic development strategy in the next five to 10 years. Since many of them were directly involved in strategic projects located in inland provinces, they are prone to promote interior-oriented investments and development. China’s technosecurity strategy today is actually the continuation of the techno-national development doctrine in Mao’s era that rationalised expensive strategic weapons efforts with an organizational style that research leaders were promoted as the essential complement of the doctrine. The rise of technocrats has significant implications upon the CCP elite politics and succession issue. It not only provides new patterns of career advancement for party cadres, but also reshapes the succession model in which future top leaders will be produced. Typical technocrats like Ding Xuexiang and Chen Jining have emerged as likely successors to the top leadership. As Xi himself does not have a strong factional background, he tends to promote technocrats with certain detachment from factional politics, which may lead them to have greater loyalty to the top leadership. Factional factors based on provinces are increasingly giving way to technocratic backgrounds in the CCP’s promotion

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of cadres. Economic performances also become less relevant, as most technocrats are directly involved in specific R&D projects in their early career rather than local economic development. Technocrats tend to espouse a realistic outlook on international relations (Li and White 1990). They emphasize the crucial role of applied science in determining national strength, the competitive nature of international trade and the meshing of comparative advantages in international cooperation. The growing number of technocrats from military-related science and technology departments may indicate that China’s industrial or even post-industrial society today still takes on the features of the warriors’ society of the Mao era. Instead of peace, every industrial society has a Wehrwirtschaft, a term for a “preparedness economy”, or a mobilised society (Bell 1974, 356). A mobilised society is one in which the major resources of the country are concentrated on a few specific objectives defined by the government. In a mobilised society/preparedness economy tied to military and war preparedness, technocrats arising from the military–industrial complex tend to become the backbones of the bureaucratic administration. For decades, China has invested large amounts of resources into the military industries and has accumulated highly advanced technology in order to be on the level with the United States. Officials from these industries are expected to drive the forces of new engines for the coming decade by applying advanced military technology to civilian fields and integrating the military industry into local economic development. The MCF, however, does not necessarily warrant the promotion of personnel from such areas as high technology, aerospace and military expertise to the top echelon, since most of them lack expertise in critical post-industrial problems relating to health care, ageing, social security, environmental protection and foreign affairs. Some of them, in order to be selected as front runners for the Chinese leadership, have to demonstrate capabilities of handling tough governance challenges beyond the military realm. The rise of technocrats in modern times derives from the reality that skills in and knowledge of planning and organising in economic, social, military, science and technology fields have become essential for national competitiveness. As compared to typical bureaucrats, technocrats usually have technological knowhow, and are meant to be goal-oriented, to possess essential problem-solving skills and capacity of making tough decisions. The growing technocracy in the Chinese leadership is closely linked with China’s innovation-driven strategy focusing on national economic development coordinated with military and security goals. Technocrats are devoted to the built-up of technosecurity state that integrates the domestic and external security arenas and emphasises the strengthening of military and security powers. In the long run, the enhancement of technocracy in Chinese politics could lead to a more realistic outlook on international relations among the CCP elites, who will reinforce their belief in the crucial role of applied science and technology in determining regime strength and economic competitiveness.

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Chapter 2 reviews the evolution of technocracy in the PRC’s different stages, i.e. Mao Zedong’s era, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao’s time and Xi Jinping era. In Mao’s pre-reform stage, technocracy was not salient in China’s elite politics, but the leadership’s decision to promote industrialisation, modernisation and professionalization became the initial driving force for growing technocratic trend in later stages. Forward-thinking defence-technical leaders played a critical role in formulating the military S&T planning which later on had profound and far-reaching impact upon China’s military, economic and technological trajectories. They set up an organizational style that strategic weapons leaders were promoted as the essential complement of the techno-national development doctrine. This part focuses on the variations of technocracy in the reform era and discusses the political and economic rationales behind the reviving technocracy in different periods. Technocrats in the strategic weapons programmes as well as heavy and petrochemical industries were nurtured during Mao’s era, and rose through the ranks to become political heavyweights or even party/state leaders in the reform era. In the 1980s, due to China’s strategic shift from war preparation to economic development, those technicians and engineers in the civilian sectors like electricity, petroleum, electronics and metallurgy were moving along faster trackers than their peers in the strategic weaponry programmes. After the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989, Jiang Zemin became the first technocrat in the history of the PRC to lead the CCP as general secretary. Major party leaders had risen and fallen since then due to bitter power struggle, but the momentum of the technocratic movement remained. After Hu Jintao replaced Jiang Zemin as the CCP general secretary in 2002, technocrats’ proportion in the top leadership decreased, with part-time study, especially in social sciences, becoming popular in the officialdom. The technocratic trend at the top leadership continued to ebb in Xi’s first two terms, but it was more of the continuation of Hu era’s tilting towards social sciences and economic management than the reflection of Xi’s personnel preference. Despite the declining number of engineers in the top-level leadership, Xi was promoting a large number of technocrats at the ministerial/provincial level. However, in this round of promotion, few were from industries such as petroleum or mechanical engineering as in the past tradition, but increasingly more are from the military, aerospace industries or other strategic new industries. Chapter 3 analyses rising political stars with technocratic backgrounds at the 20th Party Congress in 2022. It categorizes prominent technocrats by the strategic industries they are from, trying to build up connections between their career success and China’s strategic interest in developing relevant industrial and technological capacities. It also discusses the limits of such effort in promoting indigenous innovations. The 20th Party Congress confirmed the rise of a new cohort of technocratic elites, who can be defined as “technocrats 2.0”, to the national leadership in Xi’s third term. As compared to their predecessors since Deng’s era, “technocrats 2.0” often have expertise in military and aerospace technology, nuclear technology, medical and

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biochemical science, information technology, 5G, robotics, environmental science, and artificial intelligence. Many of them have also spent many years—and in most cases more than two decades—serving as executives in China’s flagship State-owned enterprises (SOEs) and competing in the global market. The re-emergence of an “aerospace clique” largely happened when Xi consolidated his political power in his first term. Xi’s pursuit of the Chinese “space dream” has paid political dividends to those who worked to advance his agenda. From an organizational point of view, transplanting aerospace, environmental and medical technocrats into provincial government possibly helps reduce nepotism and corruption at the local level. The rise of the technocrats in military, aeronautics, public health, environmental and other security-related industries indicates the expansion of national security concept in Xi Jinping’s time and the emergence of the techno-security state under the CCP rule. Scientists and technological personnel are indispensable for the implementation of such strategy targeted at core and emerging critical technologies. The promotion of these technocrats to the level of national leadership has symbolic implications: essential engineers and managers involved in China’s techno-security projects like strategic weaponry R&D and ecological protection can be awarded handsomely in their political careers. Chapter 4 assesses how technocracy will reshape China’s future power reshuffling, and project the line-up of next generation of top leaders to be emerged in the next 5–10 years. It focuses on the personnel changes at the 20th Party Congress in 2022, examining the new features of technocracy in China’s elite politics. This chapter discusses competing theoretical models that have their respective advantages in explaining PRC’s political dynamics in different eras. The models of winner-takes-all and bandwagon are extremely powerful in explaining Mao-incommand politics prior to the reform, while the balance-of-power model is useful for understanding elite politics in Deng Xiaoping’s time. Xi became a game changer in 2012, when he replaced Hu as CCP general secretary and started a “re-centralisation” process that consolidated his power as the core leader of the party. Technocracy becomes a new model of career advancement under the Xi-in-Command model. The re-emergence of technocrats in Xi’s time reflects the growing importance of cadres’ educational and professional qualifications in their career development. Technocracy provides a new fast track to circumvent age dilemma at the cost of Youth League route in Xi’s politics. Ding Xuexiang, with consistent natural sciences and engineering experiences, is well positioned to take over Premier Li Qiang’s job and become the no. 2 powerful person at the next Party Congress scheduled in 2027. Four or five Politburo members born in the 1960s are expected to rise to the apex Politburo Standing Committee, most of whom, if not all, will probably be technocrats with S&T backgrounds. Chapter 5 emphasizes the economic and technological implications of the rise of technocratic politics in China, and the related political culture that is adapted to the increasingly tense international relations. In detail, its impact upon China’s domestic governance, military–industrial complex, foreign policy, and international relations is reviewed.

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From the perspective of the “expert vs. red” debate, this chapter analyses the Party’s new personnel ideology of emphasising S&T expertise over political networking and social management. As compared to Youth League officials, most of whom are trained in social sciences and humanities and good at building up political connections, S&T cadres are strong in organizing research projects but weak in playing factional politics. The rise of technocracy has suppressed factional politics to some extent, but the temporarily prevailing “winner-takes-all” mode cannot uproot intra-Party cliques aligned with powerful individuals at the top, or eradicate corruption within the Party. Some of the technocrats come from the military-business complex that has great diversity of economic activity and possesses many complex and differentiated economic organisations. Many technocrats have studying or working experiences in foreign countries, which help them acquire international perspectives of developing tech capabilities. Such overseas stints, however, will not make them liberal-minded or democracy-inclined. Technocrats’ security-oriented posture will increase the senses of insecurity of other countries including the United States, leading to intensified security dilemma in East Asia and the world in the future. Chapter 6 draws conclusions from evidence and analysis provided in previous chapters. It reveals that technocrats with expertise and experiences in military-related and high-tech industries may assume higher positions and reshape China’s economic development strategy in the next five to 10 years. Behind this new round of technocracy is the emergence of China’s military–industrial-technological complex, which refers to a close relationship among the government, the defense industry and tech sectors. Technocratic politics consolidates such an informal alliance between the nation’s military apparatus and the technology industry as a vested interest, which will profoundly reshape the country’s national defense and foreign policy. This chapter argues that the enhancement of technocracy in Chinese politics could lead to a more realistic outlook on international relations among the CCP elites, who will reinforce their belief in the crucial role of applied science and technology in determining regime strength and economic competitiveness. In Xi’s third term, the State Council has become a technocratic cabinet led by an unprecedented number of officials with S&T expertise. These technocrats are familiar with China’s hierarchical innovation system, and good at coordination and control of project-based funding programs. Yet the harder the technocratic leadership is pushing the country to become an S&T superpower, the more likely China is stuck in the security dilemma with the United States and neighbouring countries.

References Bell, D. 1974. The Coming of Post-industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting. London: Heinemann. Berman, Elizabeth Popp. 2022. Thinking like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy. Princeton University Press

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Cole, Matthew. 2022. What’s Wrong with Technocracy? Boston Review. https://www.bostonreview. net/articles/whats-wrong-with-technocracy/. Accessed 9 Nov 2022. Dargent, Eduardo. 2014. Technocracy and Democracy in Latin America: The Experts Running Government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Esmark, A. 2017. The technocratic take-over of democracy: Connectivity, reflexivity and accountability. In Paper Prepared for the 3rd International Conference on Public Policy (ICPP), Singapore, 28–30 June 2017. Fei, Xiaotong. 1953. China’s Gentry. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Feigenbaum, Evan A. 2003. China’s Techno-warriors: National Security and Strategic Competition from the Nuclear to the Information Age. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Fischer, F. 1990. Technocracy and the Politics of Expertise. London: Sage. Habermas, Jurgen. 1973. Legitimation Crisis. Boston, MA: Beacon. Huntington, Samuel P. 1974. Postindustrial Politics: How Benign Will It Be? Comparative Politics 6 (2). Larson, Magali Sarfatti. 1972–73. Notes on Technocracy: Some Problems of Theory, Ideology and Power. Berkeley Journal of Sociology, Vol. 17, pp. 1–34 Li, Cheng, and Lynn, White. 1990. Elite transformation and modern change in Mainland China and Taiwan: Empirical data and the theory of technocracy. The China Quarterly 121: 1–35. Meynaud, Jean. 1969. Technocracy. Free Press. Radaelli, Claudio M. 1999. Technocracy in the European Union. Routledge. Sanchez-Cuenca, Ignacio. 2017. From a deficit of democracy to a technocratic order: The postcrisis debate on Europe. The Annual Review of Political Science 20: 351–369. Schneider, Ben Ross. 1998. The Material Basis of Technocracy: Investor Conidence and Neoliberalism in Latin America. In The Politics of Expertise in Latin America Miguel A. Centenoand Patricio Silva, ed. New York: Macmillan Press. Shih, Lea. 2017. The Technocrats are Back: Aerospace Experts in China’s New Leadership, Merics, 3 November 2017. At https://www.merics.org/en/blog/technocrats-are-back-aerospace-expertschinas-newleadership. Accessed 9 May 2022. Silva, Patricio. 2008. In the Name of Reason: Technocrats and Politics in Chile. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Smith, M.G. 1988. Marx, Technocracy, and the Corporatist Ethos. Studies in Soviet Thought 36 (4): 233–250. Smyth, W.H. 1919. Technocracy—Ways and means to gain industrial democracy. Industrial Management 57: 385–389. U.S. Department of Defense. 2022. Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China (2022 China Military Power Report). https://s3.documentcloud.org/doc uments/23321290/2022-military-and-security-developments-involving-the-peoples-republicof-china.pdf. Accessed 2 Feb 2023. Urbinati, N. 2014. Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth, and the People. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Weiler, J. 1991. The Transformation of Europe. Yale Law Journal 100/8: 2468–2469. Wu, Yanrui. 2018. Structural changes in Chinese Economy: Progress and challenges. East Asian Policy 10 (4): 49–59.

Chapter 2

Evolution of Technocracy in P.R. China

In the history of the PRC, the CCP leadership has been advocating for rapid development of science and technology, and science policy has played a greater role in national politics than it does in many other countries. This chapter reviews the evolution of technocracy in the People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s different stages, i.e. Mao Zedong’s era, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao’s time and Xi Jinping era. In Mao’s pre-reform stage, technocracy was not salient in China’s elite politics. This part focuses on the variations of technocracy in the reform era and discusses the political and economic rationales behind the reviving technocracy in different periods.

2.1 Mao’s Era In most of Mao’s period, technocrats were not preponderant in China’s national affairs largely due to Mao’s emphasis upon political loyalty rather than professionalism and meritocracy. To support China’s industrialisation, the Party under Mao overhauled mainland universities in the 1950s, mirroring the Soviet Union’s model by setting up a large number of engineering schools while cutting down on humanities departments. Influenced by the Soviet model, the organisation of Chinese science was based on bureaucratic rather than professional principles. Instead of scientists calling the shots, the administrators controlled the recruitment and personnel mobility. These individual scientists, seen as simply skilled workers and as employees of their institutions, were expected to work as components of collective units. Tensions between scientists and administrators built up from the early days of the People’s Republic till today and culminated during the Cultural Revolution. Nevertheless, even in the early days of the PRC, other revolutionary leaders like Marshall Peng Dehuai and Gao Gang, the commander of the North-east Military Region, urged strengthening of efforts to promote industrialisation, modernisation and professionalization (Hung 1991, pp. 79–80), which became the initial driving © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 G. Chen, Political Implications of China’s Technocracy in the Reform Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-2977-1_2

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force for growing technocratic trend in later stages. Some of their advocates were counterbalances to Mao’s attempt to strengthen party control over the army and the state apparatus, and the seriousness of these challenges can be seen by the intensity of Mao’s responses. Gao committed suicide after he was charged with the crime of being a “big conspirator,” an “independent kingdom maker” and a “rightist capitalistroader.” Peng opposed Mao’s view of “politics in command” in the army because it hindered professionalisation, and he was charged with the crimes of being an antiParty conspirator and of being the actual leader of the Gao Gang-Rao Shushi alliance (Chiang 1961). During most of Mao’s era, recruitment to cadre positions was generally based on communist redness, or proletariat class background, seniority in joining the CCP and political loyalty—rather than on technical training or administrative competence. With Mao’s hostile attitudes towards intellectuals, the purity of redness often trumped technical engineering competence and other expertise in his politics. Simon (1985) even argued that the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) was caused by Mao’s concern with the increasing technocratic tendency in PRC. During the Cultural Revolution, he first used the Red Guards to humiliate intellectuals, then urged workers to destroy the established Party and the state machinery, and finally created a leadership of the revolutionary triple alliance, consisting of military officers, mass organization leaders and revolutionary cadres. A large number of peasants, workers and soldiers occupied key positions in the Party’s Central Committee and the Politburo in the 1970s, among whom were Chen Yonggui, a peasant from the Dazhai brigade and Wang Hongwen, a worker from Shanghai city. Intellectuals on the Mainland were still branded the “stinking ninth category.“ Under these circumstances, intellectuals as such had no claim on leadership. During the first three decades of the PRC regime, when technocratic views were severely criticized as Soviet revisionism, the educational level of Party members and cadres was extremely low. In early 1980s, only about 4% of CCP members attained higher educational degrees (Li and White 1990, p. 12). Nevertheless, it was difficult for the Communist leadership to completely reverse China’s meritocratic tradition that had lasted for two thousand years, even during the Cultural Revolution. Merit examinations for the civil service were a Chinese administrative innovation which preceded similar examinations in the west by about 1,000 years. For centuries, ancient China’s civil service systems were based on nationwide meritocratic exams organised by the central governments of various dynasties. This meritocratic tradition was largely overthrown by the CCP during the Cultural Revolution when cadre selection and promotion were based on family and class backgrounds and ideological loyalty towards communism, rather than on educational credentials and technical training. Yet the meritocratic and technocratic orientation was still supported by many leaders not just because of the historical heritage, but more from the realistic demand for technological and economic self-reliance in the Cold War contest. Starting from mid-1950s, military scientists and their patrons among the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)’s ten Marshals and leading generals began to offer alternative

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development policies for specific critical economic sectors that became a focus of intense policy debate (Feigenbaum 1999, p. 285). These military science elites and their PLA patrons highlighted the role of critical technologies planning in the development of both military and civilian industries. Despite Mao’s utmost power and preference of political loyalty than technical expertise, military leaders and their technical advisors stepped directly into the policy debate with an alternative strategy of their own. Marshal Nie Rongzhen, a forwardthinking defence-technical leader, played a critical role in formulating the military science and technology planning which later on had profound and far-reaching impact upon China’s military, economic and technological trajectories. Nie and other Chinese leaders believed in a techno-national development doctrine that rationalised expensive strategic weapons efforts, setting up an organizational style that strategic weapons leaders were promoted as the essential complement of the doctrine. Such techno-national strategy was driven first by the PRC leadership’s zest in industrial modernisation, and anxiety over the technological gap between the U.S. and Chinese military forces exposed in the Korean War (1950–53), and ultimate, by the Politburo’s decision in 1955 to acquire nuclear and other strategic weapons. Under the technology-security ideology, indigenization thus became the critical element in China’s military and economic development in Mao’s era. Top leaders believed that domestic progress in advanced science and technology would be closely linked to PRC’s position in the Cold War global order. When the strategic weapons programmes began to integrate technical personnel into the decision stratum in the late 1950s, the proper role of experts (zhuanjia) and other technical personnel, as opposed to political cadres, was purposefully respected in the decision-making. The programmes’ leaders took the “expert” institution further than did any other bureaucratic system in China, not just by promoting technically talented people, but by allowing some of China’s most prominent scientists and engineers to play decisive roles themselves. Ultimately, the integration of these experts into the political and administrative decision stratum had considerable resonance for the final direction of government budgets, research planning and policy implementation. Leaders of strategic research programmes actively encouraged the devolution of genuine decision-making power from bureaucrats and Party cadres to scientists and specialists of the highest technical stature. In China’s strategic weapons programmes, science and technical personnel took charge of almost all phases of weapons design and production, as well as management work and liaison with the CCP leadership. Renowned nuclear physicists including Zhu Guangya and Deng Jiaxian played mainly administrative roles within the programmes, serving as key links between political cadres and technical experts. Programme administrators institutionalized cross-ministerial and crosssystem collaboration in contrast to the endemic compartmentalization that has long plagued the Chinese bureaucracy. Zhu and Deng, who earned their PhDs in physics from the University of Michigan and Purdue University respectively, organized and led the research, design, manufacture and testing of China’s atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs from 1950

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to 1970s. These leaders built flat, non-hierarchical organizational structures characterized by high-low, Central-local and leadership-staff contact, co-ordination and decision-making. PLA administrators also promoted a performance metric in strategic weapons domains based on universal standardization and the rigorous benchmarking of Chinese progress against international technical developments. Zhu became the first President of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) in 1994. Deng became a member of the elite CCP Central Committee in 1982, and in 1999, he was posthumously awarded the Two Bombs, One Satellite Meritorious Award for his contributions to Chinese military science, along with 22 other scientists. Experts in engineering subjects like Qian Xuesen, the aerospace engineer who led led the Chinese missile program, played equally important roles in China’s strategic weapons effort. Qian, also a winner of the Two Bombs, One Satellite Meritorious Award in 1999, became a state leader by acting as a CPPCC vice chairman from 1986 to 1998. Ultimately, these military scientists and engineers who returned from overseas training exerted long-term influence on the development of China’s human infrastructure for high-level science and engineering. China’s technonationalism centred on indigenisation and nurturance was reflected not only in the strategic weapons programmes, but in other military and civilian industries of strategic importance as well. As a result, senior technical personnel was integrated into the administrative and programmatic decision-making stratum in various areas. In the 1950s and early 1960s, China sent thousands of students to the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries, many of whom had science and engineering backgrounds. Jiang Zemin, an electrical engineer, received his training at the Stalin Automobile Works in Moscow in the 1950s, while Li Peng had studied hydropower science in Moscow before he came back to work in a hydropower station in northeast China. Zou Jiahua studied machinery manufacturing in an industrial colleage in Moscow. After the Sino-Soviet political and diplomatic split in the early 1960s, Chinese science and technology development was forced into a state of self-reliance. These returnees with technological trainings in the Soviet camp became the backbone of China’s industrial development in the state of isolation. As a direct consequence of the post1960s microelectronics revolution that gave rise to large-scale integrated circuits, fibre optics and artificial intelligence, Chinese leaders started to view the locus of innovation as having shifted from military to civilian spheres. This further uplifted the prominence of these experts with specialised training in civilian technologies. Jiang, Li and Zou were fast-tracked to the Politburo, the top echelon of power, in the reform era, with Jiang becoming the CCP general secretary, Li Peng the premier and Zou Jiahua vice premier. In Mao’s era, despite frequent disruptions from waves of political campaigns, the PRC still made impressive technological achievements by building up a highly elitist and professional model of organization that exalted the importance of scientists, engineers and technical personnel. Most importantly, it offered a cooperative, open, network-based and flexible alternative to the highly bureaucratized, vertical

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23

and compartmentalized organizational system that characterizes so many Chinese technology sectors (Feigenbaum 1999, p. 300). The integration of these science and technical personnel into the strategic military and economic programmes paved way to the political rise of technocrats in the reform era.

2.2 Technocracy in Deng, Jiang and Hu’s Time China’s military and industrial catch-up continued after Mao’s death in 1976, with the operational template of military developmentalism featured with expert-orientated organizational style and government-directed critical technologies planning to leave enormous legacy upon the CCP politics and industrial policy in the reform era. Technocrats in the strategic weapons programmes as well as heavy and petrochemical industries were nurtured during Mao’s era, and rose through the ranks to become political heavyweights or even party/state leaders in the reform era. Although most of them received training or started their career in military-related institutions, many gradually took up exclusively civilian roles, left the military-technical system, and became heads of major scientific, technical and high technology industrial agencies in military and cilivian sectors. Some even climbed to high-level decision-making platforms like the CCP Central Committee and Politburo Bureau or intra-ministerial planning departments and policy groups. China’s technocratic movement was launched by Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s. The movement spread to government and CCP organisations at various levels and introduced drastic changes in the composition of the Chinese leadership (Lee 1991). After Deng Xiaoping came to power and started China’s reform and opening up policy in 1978, the CCP changed Mao’s populist criteria for cadre selection and promoted millions of intellectuals, especially those with physical science or engineering backgrounds, to key positions in the party-state. He announced that “the crux of the Four Modernisations in Agriculture, Industry, Defence and Science and Technology is the mastery of modern science and technology”, and that “without the high-speed development of science and technology, it is impossible to develop the national economy at a high speed” (Schneider 1981). In 1982, the CCP held its first post-Mao Party Congress, which symbolised the establishment of the Deng leadership and witnessed a large number of technocrats like Li Peng, Hu Qili and Jiang Zemin being recruited into the Central Committee (Zheng 2002, p. 92). During Deng’s meeting with Czech President Gustav Husak on 5 September 1988, Deng put forward the famous theory that “science and technology are primary productive forces” (China Daily 2008). Deng also told an American professor he would like to promote some of the 30- and 40-year-old scientists to top leadership positions (People’s Daily 1986, p. 1). In the 1980s, due to China’s strategic shift from war preparation to economic development, those technicians and engineers in the civilian sectors like electricity, petroleum, electronics and metallurgy were moving along faster trackers than their peers in the strategic weaponry programmes. In Deng’s time, typical technocrats like

24

2 Evolution of Technocracy in P.R. China

Li Peng, a hydropower engineer, Jiang Zemin, a graduate in electrical engineering, and Hu Qili, who once studied physics at Peking University, rose to top positions in the CCP. Due to energy sector’s importance in China’s overall economic strategy and self-reliance ideology, leading cadres in this realm had competitive edges over other technocrats in the early reform era. In particular, prominent managers in the oil industry, which was controlled by General Yu Qiuli in Mao’s time, formed the Petroleum Gang in Deng and Jiang’s elite politics. Under the patronage of Yu, who was China’s vice premier between 1975 and 1982 and kept significant political influence till late 1990s, many petrochemical executives rose quickly through the ranks. Some officials with petroleum industry background, including Zeng Qinghong, Zhou Yongkang and Zhang Gaoli, were even given membership of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee, the most powerful sanctum inside the party-state possessing the highest authority. Zeng Qinghong, a China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) executive who finally joined the Politburo Standing Committee in 2002, was China’s Vice President from 2003 to 2008 and regarded as the head of the princeling faction inside the top leadership. Zhou Yongkang, a China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) veteran and confidante of former president Jiang Zemin, entered the Politburo Standing Committee in 2007 to head political and legal affairs and command the country’s armed police force. In the anti-corruption campaign launched by Xi Jinping in 2012, Zhou and many of his protégés in the petroleum sector, including Jiang Jiemin and Su Shulin, were jailed under graft charges. The rise and falls of the Petroleum Gang in Chinese politics indicate the Xi Jinping leadership’s shift in strategic priority from conventional energy sectors to emerging industries of strategic importance like semiconductors, aerospace and renewable energy. In the context of opening up, the access to foreign knowledge was important for Deng’s economic catch-up plan, and those with overseas studying experiences in the Soviet Union, the United States and other industrialized economies were often promoted to key positions in the bureaucracy. Jiang Zemin and Li Peng were the most prominent examples of technocrats with studying experiences in the Soviet Union, although much of their promotions happened during the period of Sino-Soviet split that lasted till the late 1980s. The promotion of engineers in civilian sectors demonstrated Deng’s new vision of formulating less weapons-focused development strategy based on his famous assessment that peace and development were the two major themes of the contemporary world, which was very different from Mao’s war preparation mentality. Former strategic weaponeers started the “863” programme in 1986, which combined the Mao style of strategic weapons programmes with the new, largely civilian-focused policy paradigms focused on international exchange. Since then, China has made investments in seeking opportunities of attracting foreign investment and knowledge building in targeted areas of science and technology (S&T) to enhance domestic research capacity. Deng started China’s unprecedented entry into the global science and technology system, but Mao era’s militarystyle organizational and managerial forms remained standard throughout much of the

2.2 Technocracy in Deng, Jiang and Hu’s Time

25

civilian component of China’s state-led R&D system. Such historical legacy consequently paved way for the rise of military and aerospace technocrats in Hu and Xi’s times. After the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989, Jiang Zemin became the first technocrat in the history of the PRC to lead the CCP as general secretary. Major party leaders had risen and fallen since then due to bitter power struggle, but the momentum of the technocratic movement remained. During the 14th Party Congress in 1992, five out of the seven (71 per cent) newly selected members in the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) were engineers (Fig. 2.1). Jiang, Li, Hu Jintao and other top technocrats further consolidated such a trend in the 1990s and early 2000s, with the elite PSC being dominated by engineers between 1992 and 2012 (Fig. 2.1). The movement reached its peak at the 15th Party Congress in 1997, when all seven Politburo Standing Committee members (Fig. 2.1) and 18 of the 24 Politburo members were technocrats (Zheng 2002, p. 92). Deng’s S&T strategy continued in the 1990s, with spending on S&T and R&D in China increasing at a rate faster than that of overall economic growth (OECD 2010). As a concept, talent (rencai) gained increasing popularity and significance in China, when the leadership realised that ‘empowering the nation with talent’ (rencai qiangguo) is key to ‘rejuvenating the nation with science, technology, and education’ (kejiao xingguo), a strategy introduced in the mid-1990s (Cao et al 2020, p. 174). Under Jiang’s full-fledged technocratic leadership, the promotion of large number of technocrats with science and technology backgrounds indicated the top leadership’s critical concerns about whether China’s potential could be realized, given the uncertainties surrounding the demand and supply, quantity and quality, and effective utilisation of China’s current and future S&T workforce (Simon and Cao 2009). CCP leadership understood that the country was facing a serious talent challenge, especially at the high end. 120% 100%

100%

100% 89%

80% 71% 60% 43%

40% 29%

29%

20% 0% 1992 (14th) 1997 (15th) 2002 (16th) 2007 (17th) 2012 (18th) 2017 (19th) 2022 (20th) Fig. 2.1 Proportions of PSC Members Trained as Engineers (1992–2022). Source compiled by the Author

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2 Evolution of Technocracy in P.R. China

The rising technocracy in Chinese politics was closely related to the CCP’s fixation with modernisation based on science and technology rather than the Confucian tradition of valuing education and scholarship. In ancient China, men who rose to official positions through examination were always generalists, and were neither specialists nor technocrats in a modern sense (Li and White 1990, p. 17). When Confucius speaks of “finding out”, he is not seeking to explore something new but to rediscover the past. In a society in which historic traditions have the only real validity, influence lies not with the innovators but with those who can guide along established paths (Fei 1953, pp. 67–8). In the 1990s, the predominance of those trained in engineering and natural sciences was evident in the CCP leadership, accounting for 56% of the 273 political elites in 1994, while those majoring in economics and management, military science and engineering, social sciences and law, and humanities made up 9.9%, 1.5%, 15% and 16.1% respectively (Li 2000, p. 20). Technocrats’ representation in high-level leadership had started to pick up even before the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989, but the momentum accelerated in the 1990s, with the proportion of technocrats in the Politburo and Central Committee jumped from 0 and 2% in 1982 to 75% and 51% in 1998 (Table 2.1). Technocratic elites in Jiang’s time had a diverse range of educational backgrounds including engineering, geology, agronomy, biology, physics, chemistry, medical science and mathematics architecture, with those majoring in military science and engineering only making up only 1.5% of the top political elites in 1994 (Li 2000, p. 20). Hu Jintao replaced Jiang Zemin as the CCP general secretary at the 16th Party Congress in 2002. However, Jiang did not step down from all of his positions. He retained the chairmanship of the powerful Central Military Commission for another two years, which extended his political influence and patronage significantly in the elite politics. Cadres with their academic training mainly in engineering and production-related fields and their career backgrounds in specialist positions at functional organisations continued to prevail in the power reshuffling. All the nine PSC members shared an engineering educational background between 2002 and 2007 (Fig. 2.1). Hu Jintao, the successor to Jiang, was a hydraulic engineer by training while his premier, Wen Jiabao, specialised in geological engineering. Wu Table 2.1 Technocrats’ Representation in High-Level Leadership (1982–98) 1982

1987

1998

Leadership body

No. (% of total)

No. (% of total)

No. (% of total)

Politburo members

0 (0)

9 (50)

18 (75)

Central Committee full members

4 (2)

34 (26)

98 (51)

State Council ministers

1 (2)

17 (45)

19 (66)

Provincial party secretaries

0 (0)

7 (25)

19 (61)

Provincial governors

0 (0)

8 (33)

23 (74)

Source Li (2000, p. 22)

2.2 Technocracy in Deng, Jiang and Hu’s Time

27

Bangguo, then NPC chairman, Jia Qinglin, CPPCC chairman, Huang Ju, the firstranked vice premier and Li Changchun, the top official in charge of propaganda, were electrical engineers by training, while Zeng Qinghong, China’s vice president, and Wu Guanzheng, secretary of the anti-corruption Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, were engineers in automatic control systems. Luo Gan, secretary of the CCP Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, was a machinery engineer with overseas study experience in East Germany during the Cold War. Still, those who met the academic requirement of a technocrat were in a descending order by rank in the top decision-making platforms. Although all the seats in the highest Politburo Standing Committee were taken by graduates of natural sciences and engineering at the 16th Party Congress, only 57% of CCP Central Secretariat members, 47% of the Politburo members (excluding standing members), 41% of the full members and 25% of the alternate members in the Central Committee had academic training in natural sciences and engineering (Bo 2007, p. 101). The Central Secretariat, which is mainly responsible for carrying out routine operations of the Politburo, is empowered by the Politburo to make day-to-day decisions and act as a coordinator between the hierarchies of the Party, State Council (China’s cabinet) and military. A Secretariat member can wield more power than a Politburo member who holds a mainly ceremonial role. The descending numbers of technocrats along the power hierarchy in Hu’s first term pointed to a declining trend of technocracy down the road, as future Standing Committee members were often selected from incumbent Politburo members while Politburo members were selected from Central Committee members. Meanwhile an increasing number of senior leaders obtained their degrees on a part-time basis, which also diluted the technocratic attribute of Chinese politics. Some Central Committee members, including Xi Jinping, Liu Yandong and Zhou Xiaochuan, had a college degree in engineering, but received a doctoral degree in social sciences. From 1975 to 1979, Xi studied chemical engineering at the prestigious Tsinghua University as a worker-peasant-soldier student in Beijing. During the later part of the Cultural Revolution, worker-peasant-soldier students (gongnongbing xueyuan) were enrolled in colleges not for their academic qualifications, but rather for the proletarian class background of their parents. In 1977, the worker-peasant-soldier program ended when Deng Xiaoping reinstated the National Higher Education Entrance Examination (gaokao). More than twenty years later, when he was acting governor of Zhejiang province, he obtained a doctoral degree in law on a part-time basis from the same university. Liu’s college major was chemical engineering at Tsinghua University as well, and later she received her PhD degree in politics at Jilin University. Zhou studied chemical engineering at Beijing Institute of Chemical Engineering, but received a doctoral degree in economic management from Tsinghua University. More importantly, many officials with academic training in natural sciences or engineering did not have a career background in engineering or other specialist positions at functional organisations. Despite this, these leaders could still be categorised as technocrats since their early science and engineering training had profound impact upon their way of thinking and policy preference.

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The proportion of leaders with engineering educational background started to decline at the 17th Party Congress in 2007, when Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang entered the top echelon of power and became heirs apparent to Chinese presidency and premiership. With a law degree and a PhD in economics from Peking University, Li was the only PSC member with a background in the social sciences rather than engineering between 2007 and 2012. Compared to Jiang’s tenure, the Hu Jintao era witnessed a decrease in technocrats’ proportion in the top leadership (Fig. 2.1). Part-time study, especially in social sciences, became popular in the officialdom, and the disconnection between academic training and their career development was common. Because of this, technocratic training and specialist career experience were less relevant for policymaking once these cadres were assuming key leading positions. Compared to the central committees since 1987, the number of technocrats who had both academic training in a natural science or engineering and career backgrounds in specialist positions in functional organisations declined in the 16th Central Committee (2002–2007) (Bo 2007 p. 108). In Hu’s time, Chinese officials chose to enhance their academic knowledge in social sciences and economic management due to the new promotion criteria based on economic growth and social stability. In Hu’s first term, four (Hu Jintao, Wu Bangguo, Huang Ju and Wu Guanzheng) among the nine Politburo Standing Committee members were graduates from the Tsinghua University, a top university famous for its science and engineering research capacity. In Hu’s second term, Xi Jinping, another Tsinghua graduate, became an heir apparent in the Standing Committee. Other politically prominent Tsinghua alumni in Hu’s tenure included Chen Yuan, Hua Jianmin, Jia Chunwang, Li Tielin, Liu Yandong, Wang Shucheng, Xie Zhenhua and Zhang Delin, some of whom became party or state leaders. Zhu Rongji, China’s premier in Jiang’s tenure, also graduated from the Tsinghua University with a degree in electrical engineering. Bo (2007) measured the group cohesion of the Tsinghua Clique (Table 2.2), arguing that it was more cohesive than other factions like the Shanghai Gang or the Princelings due to personal ties among the alumni. The political influence of the Tsinghua Clique also partially facilitated Xi’s emergence as a successor to Hu. Nevertheless, no leader was clearly identified as the head of this clique. Due to Tsinghua’s leading position in China’s science and engineering research, the rise of the Tsinghua Clique could be regarded as the outcome of the technocratic movement in the bureaucracy. All the Tsinghua alumni in the 16th Central Committee majored in engineering or natural sciences including automatic control, chemical engineering, mechanics and electronics (Table 2.2).

2.3 Technocracy in Xi’s Era The technocratic trend at the top leadership continued to ebb in Xi’s first two terms. However, it was more of the continuation of Hu era’s tilting towards social sciences and economic management than the reflection of Xi’s personnel preference.

2.3 Technocracy in Xi’s Era

29

Table 2.2 Tsinghua Graduates in the 16th CCP Central Committee Name

Hometown

Birth

Major

Department

Chen Yuan

Shanghai

1945

Automatic control

Automatic control

Hu Jintao

Anhui

1942

Hydropower

Water conservancy

Hua Jianmin

Jiangsu

1940

Gas turbine

Power

Huang Ju

Zhejiang

1938

Electrical machinery

Electrical machinery

Jia Chunwang

Beijing

1938

Engineering physics

Engineering physics

Li Tielin

Hunan

1943

Automatic control

Automatic control

Liu Yandong (f.)

Jiangsu

1945

Chemical engineering

Chemical engineering

Tian Chengping

Hebei

1945

Civil architecture

Civil architecture

Wang Shucheng

Jiangsu

1941

Water conservancy

Water conservancy

Wu Bangguo

Anhui

1941

Electron tube

Radio electronics

Wu Guanzheng

Jiangxi

1938

Thermal measurement

Power

Wu Qidi (f.)

Zhejiang

1947

Radio

Radio electronics

Xi Jinping

Shaanxi

1953

Chemical engineering

Chemical engineering

Xie Qihua (f.)

Zhejiang

1943

Civil engineering

Civil engineering

Xie Zhenhua

Tianjin

1949

Engineering physics

Engineering physics

Xu Rongkai

Chongqing

1942

Mechanics

Mechanics

Zeng Peiyan

Zhejiang

1938

Electronics

Radio electronics

Zhang Delin

Beijing

1939

Mechanics

Mechanics

Zhang Fusen

Beijing

1940

Automatic control

Automatic control

Zhang Huazhu

Jiangsu

1945

Automatic control

Automatic control

Source Bo (2007), p. 176

Xi himself was a compromise candidate among Hu Jintao’s Chinese Communist Youth League (CCYL) clique, Zeng Qinghong’s princeling group and Jiang Zemin’s Shanghai Gang, so he could only consolidate his political power gradually after becoming the paramount leader. Like him, other PSC and Politburo members were also decided by horse-trading behind the scenes before the Party Congresses, so the line-ups of the Politburo at the 19th and 20th were more of the outcome from the balance of power in factional politics than Xi’s arrangement. He could not completely dominate personnel reshuffling until the 20th Party Congress in 2022. More importantly, even with successful power consolidation, the incumbent paramount leader still could not fully change the strong momentum of the CCP power succession, which was shaped by the CCP reserve cadre (houbei ganbu) system (Tsai and Kou 2015) left by his predecessors. Reserve cadres are essentially the Party’s “disciples” who have the potential to be selected for higher leading positions. Various echelons of reserve cadres from the top to the grassroots are built up by the CCP’s organisation department according to the criteria and principles accepted by the top leadership.

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2 Evolution of Technocracy in P.R. China

As discussed before, during the transition from Mao’s era to Deng’s period, the promotion criteria was shifted from political loyalty and family background to meritocracy and technocracy. However such transition did not happen overnight, and even in the early stage of the reform era, many reserve cadres selected by Mao’s leadership could still stay in the pool of candidates for leading positions. It takes years for the paramount leader to change the composition of the legion of youthful political elites according to his criteria and ideology. When Xi became the CCP general secretary at the 18th Party Congress in 2012, the proportion of leaders with engineering educational backgrounds in the PSC dropped from 89 to 29%; and five years later, when Xi was re-elected at the 19th Party Congress, that proportion was maintained at 29 per cent (Fig. 2.1). Of the seven PSC members after the 19th Party Congress in 2017, only Xi and Wang Yang studied engineering as the first major in college (Table 2.3). Among the 18 non-PSC members in the Politburo, only seven, namely Ding Xuexiang, Sun Chunlan, Li Qiang, Yang Xiaodu, Chen Xi, Chen Quanguo and Guo Shengkun, had educational backgrounds in engineering (Table 2.3). Two members were from the PLA, having received military training in military colleges, while all of the others majored in humanities and social sciences in college. In total, only nine out of the 25 (36%) Politburo members in Xi’s second term had educational backgrounds in engineering. Even among these nine members, some, including Xi himself, shifted their majors from engineering and physical sciences to humanities and social sciences in their part-time graduate studies while rising through the ranks. Nevertheless, the decline in the number of engineers in the top echelon of power did not imply a waning technocratic tendency in Xi’s first two terms. It indicated a more complicated situation of technocracy when China, after decades of massive industrialisation and urbanisation, was in transition from an industrial society to a post-industrial society mainly driven by the service industry and domestic consumption (Chen 2020, p. 129). The major intellectual and sociological problems of the post-industrial society are those of “organized complexity”—the management of large-scale systems, with large numbers of interacting variables, which have to be coordinated to achieve specific goals (Bell 1974, p. 29). In the midst of the shift from manufacturing to the service industry in postindustrial society, the definition of technocrats should be expanded to cover not only engineers and physical scientists, but also “econocrats” that include economists, financial experts, statisticians and other bureaucrats specialising in complicated social science or interdisciplinary subjects. Since its foundation in 1949, the PRC has transitioned from Mao’s military society led by warriors to Deng’s industrial society governed by engineers, and then to Xi’s post-industrial society governed by loosely defined technocrats with expertise on a wide range of issues. For each term of the Politburo in the reform era, CCP leaders had generally been better educated with higher university degrees than their predecessors. Such a trend also reflected the growing technocratic tendency in Chinese elite politics that increasingly emphasised knowledge, technology and new science-based industries.

2.3 Technocracy in Xi’s Era

31

Table 2.3 Educational Backgrounds of Politburo and Its Standing Committee Members after the 19th Party Congress Politburo Standing Committee Name 1. Xi

University Majors

Jinpinga

Bachelor degree in chemical engineering, and doctoral degree in Marxist theory

2. Li Keqiang

Bachelor degree in law, and doctoral degree in economics

3. Li Zhanshu

Master of business administration (MBA)

4. Wang

Yanga

Master’s degree in engineering

5. Wang Huning

Master’s degree in international politics

6. Zhao Leji

Bachelor degree in philosophy and postgraduate studies in banking

7. Han Zheng

Bachelor degree in international relations and master’s degree in economics

Other Politburo Members Name

University Majors

1. Ding

Xuexianga

Master’s degree in science; engineer on machinery manufacture

2. Wang Chen

Master’s degree in journalism

3. Cai Qi

Doctor degree in economics

4. Liu He

Master of public administration (MPA)

5. Xu Qiliang

Learned piloting in aeronautic schools

6. Sun

Chunlana

7. Li Xi 8. Li

Studied machinery engineering; postgraduate student in decision-making management Master of business administration (MBA)

Qianga

Studied agricultural machinery; master of business administration (MBA)

9. Li Hongzhong

Bachelor degree in history

10. Yang Jiechi

Doctor degree in history

11. Yang Xiaodua

Studied pharmacy at college and law theory in a graduate school

12. Zhang Youxia

Studied in a military college

13. Chen

Xia

Master’s degree in engineering

14. Chen Quanguoa

Doctor degree in management and engineering

15. Chen Min’er

Studied law in a graduate school

16. Hu Chunhua

Bachelor degree in Chinese language and master’s degree in world economy

17. Guo Shengkuna

Doctor degree in management and engineering

18. Huang Kunming

Doctor degree in public administration

a

Politburo members with engineering educational background Source Compiled by the Author

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2 Evolution of Technocracy in P.R. China

Despite the declining number of engineers in the top-level leadership, China was promoting a large number of technocrats at the ministerial/provincial level during Xi Jinping’s tenure. However, in this round of promotion, few were from industries such as petroleum or mechanical engineering as in the past tradition, but increasingly more are from the military, aerospace industries or other strategic new industries. Behind this new round of technocracy was China’s ambition to apply advanced military technology to civilian fields and integrating the military industry into local economic development. On 22 January 2017, Xi kick-started a new commission to oversee the integration of military and civilian development ( junmin ronghe fazhan weiyuanhui) as part of the country’s ambitious military reform programme (Chen and Yu 2017). With the newly established commission, Xi aimed to develop a military–industrial complex (MIC), similar to the United States’ initiative to ensure that the armed forces are modernised commensurate with their rising status in the international arena. The MIC was a term used by outgoing US President Dwight Eisenhower in 1961 to refer to a close relationship between the government and the defence industry. Today MIC is often used in reference to an informal alliance between a nation’s military apparatus and the arms industry as a vested interest that influences national defence and foreign policy. Considerable studies have considered middle income trap (MIT) to occur when middle-income countries are trapped between low-wage manufacturers and highwage innovators because their wage rates are excessively high to compete with lowwage exporters and their level of technological capability is considerably low to enable them to compete with advanced countries (World Bank 2012; Lin 2012). That is, the MIT phenomenon is a problem of growth slowdown because of weak innovation (Lee 2021). To achieve these goals, China has injected vast amounts of resources into military industries and has accumulated highly advanced technology in order to catch up with the United States, and some believe that these might even become the main source of China’s future technological innovation and a leading force for economic growth (Shih 2017). One of the most important technology providers in the integration of military and civilian development is the aerospace industry, which has carried out high-profile megaprojects such as the Lunar Exploration Programme (also known as Chang’e Program) and the Manned Space Programme (Shenzhou Program). Before the 20th Party Congress, political frontrunners from the military and aerospace industries included Zhang Guoqing, former mayor of Tianjin and party secretary of Liaoning province, Ma Xingrui, former Guangdong governor and Xinjiang party secretary, Yuan Jiajun, former governor and party secretary of Zhejiang province, Zhang Qingwei, former party secretary of Heilongjiang province and party secretary of Hunan province, He Junke, first secretary of the CCYL Central Committee, Xu Dazhe, governor of Hunan province, Hao Peng, party secretary of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, Wang Yong, state councillor, Chen Qiufa, governor of Liaoning province, and Wang Zhigang, minister of Science and Technology.

2.3 Technocracy in Xi’s Era

33

Zhang Qingwei and Ma Xingrui were respectively former chief commanders of Chang’e 1, and Chang’e 3, the unmanned lunar-orbiting spacecraft, while General Li Shangfu, a Chinese aerospace engineer, was former chief commander of Chang’e 2. Li Shangfu became the director of the Equipment Development Department of the CMC in September 2017. In September 2018, General Li, along with the Equipment Development Department, was sanctioned by the US government for “engaging in significant transactions with persons” under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, namely for transactions that involved “Russia’s transfer to China of Su-35 combat aircraft and S-400 surface-to-air missile system-related equipment” (CNN 2022). At the 20th Party Congress in 2022, Ma Xingrui, Zhang Guoqing and Yuan Jiajun joined the Politburo while General Li Shangfu became a new member of the CMC, the supreme military decision-making body in charge of command and control of China’s armed forces. In March 2023, Li was appointed as China’s Defense Minister. These aerospace technocrats may have the potential to rise to the top echelon of power by taking PSC membership or CMC vice-chairmanship in the next five to 10 years. Other aerospace personnel now holding key positions like provincial Party secretaries, governors, ministers or Party secretaries of important commissions are promising candidates for higher positions at the next Party Congress. Zhang Qingwei, Li Shangfu, Ma Xingrui, Yuan Jiajun and Jin Zhuanglong were also general managers of the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), whose flagship products include the Shenzhou spacecraft and the Long March rockets. Yuan Jiajun was the chief commander for the Shenzhou Programme, China’s manned space programme. Jin Zhuanglong, the acting deputy director of the Bureau for the Central Civil–Military Integration Commission, was previously the chief commander of the C919 Project, the first passenger jetliner developed by Chinese engineers. He Junke, one of the youngest among them, is now leading the CCYL, which serves as a cradle for generations of state leaders including Hu Jintao, Xi’s predecessor, former Premier Li Keqiang and former Vice Premier Hu Chunhua. The promotion of He Junke to be one of the youngest ministerial officials and leader of the CCYL highlighted the start of a new type of technocratic push for younger officials in the administration. He Junke graduated from the space technology department at the National University of Defense Technology in Changsha, Hunan province in 1991 and spent 14 years in the aerospace industry. The CCYL once lost some of its sway after Xi came to power and its function as an incubator of political talent shrank, but it could be making a comeback with He’s appointment and Xi’s focus on the need for young talent again. Nevertheless, in the current era, young officials with aerospace or other technocratic backgrounds will be favoured over those with pure bureaucratic working experience. Prior to the fifth plenum of the 19th CCP Central Committee, Shaanxi Provincial Governor Liu Guozhong became party secretary of Shaanxi province, while Lan Tianli was promoted to governor of Guangxi autonomous region. Jiang Jinquan replaced Wang Huning as the new director of the CCP Central Policy Research Office. Liu Guozhong studied shell science in Huadong Institute of Engineering,

34

2 Evolution of Technocracy in P.R. China

predecessor of Nanjing University of Science and Technology, between 1978 and 1982 before pursuing his postgraduate study in Harbin Institute of Technology. Jiang Jinquan graduated from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, while Lan Tianli received his engineering degree from Beihang University, previously known as Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Both Liu and Lan graduated from universities in the family of the “Seven Sons of National Defence” (guofang qizi), which include the Beihang University (Beijing), Beijing Institute of Technology (Beijing), Harbin Engineering University (Harbin), Harbin Institute of Technology (Harbin), Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (Nanjing), Nanjing University of Science and Technology (Nanjing) and Northwestern Polytechnical University (Xi’an). They are the seven Chinese national public research universities funded by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and are widely believed to have close scientific research partnerships with the PLA.

2.4 Implications of Reviving Technocracy The 20th Party Congress in 2022 not only consolidated Xi’s power and started his third term, but also witnessed the revival of technocracy at the top level. In Xi’s new era, he has nominated cadres based on their technical expertise outside of the political circles, and these have been referred to as new technocrats. These days, the leadership has been promoting technocrats with expertise and experiences in military-related and high-tech industries like aerospace and telecommunications, who may assume even higher positions and reshape China’s future economic development strategy. The growing number of technocrats from military-related science and technology departments indicates that China’s industrial or even post-industrial society today still takes on the features of the warriors’ society of the Mao era. Instead of peace, every industrial society has a Wehrwirtschaft, a term for a “preparedness economy”, or a mobilised society (Bell 1974, p. 356). A mobilised society is one in which the major resources of the country are concentrated on a few specific objectives defined by the government. In a mobilised society/preparedness economy tied to military and war preparedness, technocrats arising from the military–industrial complex tend to become the backbones of the bureaucratic administration. For decades, China has invested large amounts of resources into the military industries and has accumulated highly advanced technology in order to be on the level with the United States. Officials from these industries are expected to drive the forces of new engines for the coming decade by applying advanced military technology to civilian fields and integrating the military industry into local economic development. The civilian–military integration, however, does not necessarily warrant the promotion of personnel from such areas as high technology, aerospace and military expertise to the top echelon, since most of them lack expertise in critical post-industrial problems relating to health care, ageing, social security, environmental protection and foreign affairs. Some of them, in order to be selected as front

2.4 Implications of Reviving Technocracy

35

runners for the Chinese leadership, have to demonstrate capabilities of handling tough governance challenges beyond the military realm. A widely known adoption of dual-use technologies is the commercialisation of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, which was initiated in 1994 by the China National Space Administration and aimed to end the reliance on the US global positioning system (GPS) operated by the US Air Force. Since 2011 when BeiDou opened the door to the rapidly expanding commercial use of satellite navigation, more buses, ships, smartphones and bike sharers within China have been using the Beidou navigation services. Xi’s effort to increase the integration between the military and industry shows Beijing’s determination to shake up the country’s bureaucratic and antiquated weapons production system. Nevertheless, interest groups in China’s defence industry and the concerns over indigenous innovation capacities and protection of intellectual property rights will be key obstacles to China’s nurturing of defence manufacturers that are regarded comparable to the likes of Lockheed Martin or Boeing in the United States. As compared to typical bureaucrats, technocrats usually have technological knowhow, and are meant to be goal-oriented, to possess essential problem-solving skills and capacity of making tough decisions. As Xi himself does not have a strong factional background, he tends to promote technocrats with certain detachment from factional politics, which will lead them to have greater loyalty to the top leadership. The rise of technocrats in modern times derives from the reality that skills in and knowledge of planning and organising in economic, social, military, science and technology fields have become essential for national competitiveness. The growing number of university graduates among the CCP elites in the reform era can partially be attributed to rising educational qualifications among the population at large. In 2017, a record high of almost 7.4 million students graduated from Chinese higher education institutions, an increase of 65 per cent from 10 years ago and nearly double that in the United States. In an authoritarian state ruled by a single party, technocrats are more likely to reach powerful positions as they do not need to compete with professional politicians for votes from the public. It is often argued that technocracy is mainly distinguished by its absence of ideological commitment, but, in reality, its ideology is deeply rooted in and grounded upon meritocracy in society. In the long run, the enhancement of technocracy in Chinese politics could lead to a more realistic outlook on international relations among the CCP elites, who will reinforce their belief in the crucial role of applied science and technology in determining regime strength and economic competitiveness.

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References Bell, Daniel. 1974. The Coming of Post-industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting. London: Heinemann. Bo, Zhiyue. 2007. China’s Elite Politics: Political Transition and Power Balancing. Singapore: World Scientific. Cao, Cong, Jeroen Baas, Caroline S. Wagner, and Koen Jonkers. 2020. Returning scientists and the emergence of China’s science system. Science and Public Policy 47 (2): 172–183. Chen, Gang, and Minghui Yu. 2017. China’s Joint Military and Civilian Development. East Asian Policy 9 (2): 26–33. Chen, Gang. 2020. What is New for China’s Technocracy in Xi Jinping’s Time? An International Journal 18 (1): 123–133. Chiang, I-shan. 1961. The Military Affairs of Communist China. In Communist China, 1949–1959, Vol. 1, Communist China Problem Research Series. Hong Kong: Union Research Institute. CNN. 2022. US sanctions Chinese military for buying Russian weapons. https://edition.cnn. com/2018/09/20/politics/russia-china-sanctions-caatsa-state-dept/index.html. Accessed 25 Oct 2022. China Daily. 2008. Science and Technology are Primary Productive Forces in 1988, 30 October 2008. At http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2008-10/30/content_7169055.htm. 21 May 2019. Fei, Xiaoton. 1953. China’s Gentry. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Feigenbaum, Evan A. 1999. Soldiers, weapons and Chinese development strategy: The Mao Era Military in China’s economic and institutional debate. The China Quarterly 158: 285–313. Hung, Lu-hsun (1991). Party-military relations in the PRC after Mao, 1976-1990. UMI, Ann Arbor Lee, Hong Yung. 1991. From Revolutionary Cadres to Party Technocrats in Socialist China. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lee, Keun. 2021. China’s Technological Leapfrogging and Economic Catch-Up: A Schumpeterian Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Li, Cheng. 2000. “Jiang Zemin’s successors: The rise of the fourth generation of leaders in the PRC. The China Quarterly 161: 1–40. Li, Cheng, and Lynn White. 1990. Elite Transformation and modern change in mainland China and Taiwan: Empirical data and the theory of technocracy. The China Quarterly 121: 1–35. Lin, J.Y. 2012. The Quest for Prosperity: How Developing Economies Can Take Off . Princeton: Princeton University Press. OECD. 2010. OECD Science, Technology and Industry Outlook 2010. Paris: OECD Publishing. People’s Daily. 1986. Deng Xiaoping huijian Chen Xingshen jiaoshou (Deng Xiaoping Meets Professor Shiing-Shen Chern), 4 Nov 1986, p. 1. Schneider, Laurence A. 1981. Science, technology and China’s four modernizations. Technology in Society 3: 291–303. Shih, Lea. 2017. The Technocrats are Back: Aerospace Experts in China’s New Leadership. Merics, 3 November 2017, at https://www.merics.org/en/blog/technocrats-are-back-aerospace-expertschinas-newleadership. 1 May 2019. Simon, Denis Fred. 1985. China’s S&T intellectuals in the post-Mao era: A retrospective and prospective glimpse. Journal of Northeast Asian Studies 4: 57–82. Simon, D.F., and C. Cao. 2009. China’s Emerging Technological Edge: Accessing the Role of High-End Talent. New York: Cambridge University Press. Tsai, Wen-Hsuan, and Chien-Wen, Kou. 2015. The Party’s Disciples: CCP Reserve Cadres and the Perpetuation of a Resilient Authoritarian Regime. The China Quarterly 221: 1–20. World Bank. 2012. China 2030: Building a Modern, Harmonious, and Creative High-Income Society. Washington, DC: The World Bank. Zheng, Yongnian. 2002. Technocratic leadership, private entrepreneurship, and party transformation in the Post-Deng era. In China’s Post-Jiang Leadership Succession: Problems and Perspectives, ed. John Wong and Zheng Yongnian, 87–118. Singapore: World Scientific.

Chapter 3

Rising Stars from Strategic Industries

This chapter studies rising political stars with technocratic backgrounds at the 20th Party Congress in 2022. It categorizes prominent technocrats by the strategic industries they are from, trying to build up connections between their career success and China’s strategic interest in developing relevant industrial and technological capacities. It also discusses the limits of such effort in promoting indigenous innovations.

3.1 China’s 20th Party Congress The CCP convened its 20th Party Congress from 16 to 22 October 2022 in Beijing, reshuffling the ruling party’s leadership and setting the political and policy direction. Xi Jinping, 69, started his third term as CCP general secretary and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), lining the Politburo and its Standing Committee (PSC) with his loyalists (Table 3.1). Xi Jinping, Zhao Leji, 65 and Wang Huning, 67 remained on the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee, the top echelon of power. They were joined by newcomers including Li Qiang, 63, Cai Qi, 66, Ding Xuexiang, 60 and Li Xi, 66 (Table 3.2). Based on the principle of seniority, all new Standing Committee members were chosen from incumbent Politburo members. The Politburo shrank to 24 members from 25, with no female representative in the group for the first time in 25 years (Table 3.2). Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Chairman of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) Wang Yang, both aged 67, had to leave the PSC because no Politburo member serves four consecutive terms except for the paramount leader himself. Li Keqiang was a Politburo Standing Committee member for three terms between 2007 and 2022, while Wang Yang acted as a Politburo member for two

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 G. Chen, Political Implications of China’s Technocracy in the Reform Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-2977-1_3

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Table 3.1 Factional Alignments in the PSC since 2012 Members connected to Xi Jinping

Members connected to Hu Jintao

Members connected to Jiang Zemin

18th Party Congress (2012)

Yu Zhengsheng and Wang Qishan

Li Keqiang and Liu Yushan,

Zhang Dejiang and Zhang Gaoli

19th Party Congress (2017)

Li Zhanshu and Zhao Li Keqiang and Wang Leji Yang,

Wang Huning and Han Zheng

20th Party Congress (2022)

Li Qiang, Zhao Leji, Cai Qi, Ding Xuexiang and Li Xi

Wang Huning

Source Compiled by the Author

terms between 2007 and 2017 and was a Politburo Standing Committee member between 2017 and 2022. Former Shanghai Party Secretary Li Qiang, now ranked No. 2 in the PSC, replaced Li Keqiang as China’s premier in a NPC session in March 2023. Unlike most of his predecessors who had been promoted to premiership, Li Qiang has no experience as a vice premier. When Xi was Zhejiang party secretary, Li was his chief of staff and his top aide between 2004 and 2007. Li’s appointment demonstrates that Xi places loyalty and trustworthiness above all else. Zhao Leji, now ranked third in the PSC, became the chairman of the National People’s Congress (NPC), while Wang Huning took over the CPPCC. Cai Qi replaced Wang Huning as the first secretary of the party’s central secretariat, which is responsible for the day-to-day running of key party affairs. Ding Xuexiang, Xi’s chief of staff who has never been a governor, provincial party secretary or minister, replaced Han Zheng as executive vice premier in March 2023. Li Xi became secretary of the anti-corruption body of Central Disciplinary Inspection Commission, taking over from Zhao Leji. Xi’s preferences were evident. According to China’s official Xinhua News Agency, Xi personally vetted the selection of the top CCP team, with “political integrity” and “clean governance” being the primary criteria. Since April 2022, Xi had personally spoken to 30 senior leaders to seek their opinions and exchanged views with other PSC members, the report said. The informal age criterion of 68 for leaving the Politburo was nullified at the Congress by cases of Xi himself, Zhang Youxia, 72 and Wang Yi, 69. Zhang, a veteran of the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, retained his position of CMC vice chairman. Like Xi, Zhang is a native of Shaanxi province, and their fathers were known to be close friends. The promotion of the long-time foreign-policy hand Wang Yi indicated the CCP’s plan to continue with its “wolf warrior” diplomacy. China’s Ambassador to the United States Qin Gang, a trusted aide to Xi, joined the elite CCP Central Committee at the Party Congress and soon became China’s foreign minister. Wang and Qin were well suited to promoting Xi’s more muscular international stance. Of the 17 Politburo members that are not PSC members, 13 were new faces, among whom Shandong Party Secretary Li Ganjie, 57, was the youngest. Li Shulei, Zhang Guoqing and Chen Jining were also in their 50 s (Table 3.2). These young

3.1 China’s 20th Party Congress

39

Table 3.2 20th CCP Politburo and Its Standing Committee Politburo Standing Committee Name

Age

Position(s) after the 20th Party Congress

1. Xi Jinping

69

CCP general secretary, Central Military Commission (CMC) chairman, China’s president

2. Li Qianga

63

Premier

3. Zhao Leji

65

Chairman of the National People’s Congress (NPC)

4. Wang Huning

67

Chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC)

5. Cai Qia

66

First-ranked secretary of the CCP Central Secretariat

6. Ding Xuexianga

60

Executive Vice Premier

66

Secretary of the Central Disciplinary Inspection Commission

Name

Age

Position(s) after the 20th Party Congress

1. Ma Xingruia

63

Xinjiang party secretary

69

Director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs

3. Yin Lia

60

Beijing party secretary

4. Shi Taifenga

66

Director of the CCP Central United Front Work Department, member of the CCP Central Secretariat

5. Liu Guozhonga

60

Vice premier

6. Li Ganjiea

57

Director of the CCP Central Organisation Department, member of the CCP Central Secretariat

7. Li Shuleia

58

Director of the CCP Central Propaganda Department, member of the CCP Central Secretariat

8. Li Hongzhong

66

NPC vice chairman

9. He Weidonga

65

CMC vice chairman

10. He Lifenga

67

Vice premier

11. Zhang Youxia

72

CMC vice chairman

7. Li

Xia

Other Politburo Members

2. Wang

Yia

12. Zhang

Guoqinga

58

Vice premier

13. Chen Wenqinga

62

Secretary of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, member of the CCP Central Secretariat

14. Chen Jining*

58

Shanghai party secretary

15. Chen Min’er

62

Tianjin party secretary

16. Yuan Jiajuna

60

Chongqing party secretary

17. Huang Kunming

65

Guangdong party secretary

a New

members Source Compiled by the Author

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3 Rising Stars from Strategic Industries

politburo members are more likely to enter the Standing Committee at the next Party Congress than their peers, with some even emerging as potential successors to Xi Jinping or Li Qiang. Party elders were no longer assured of political influence at the Party Congress. Jiang Zemin, the 96-year-old former general secretary and Zhu Rongji, 93-year-old former premier were absent from the opening and closing session, though their names were on the presidium standing committee. Jiang passed away about one month after the Congress. Hu Jintao, the 79-year-old predecessor of Xi, sat beside Xi at the closing session, but he was unexpectedly escorted out of Congress in front of the world media. The 20th Party Congress agreed to incorporate into the Party Charter “new developments” in “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” since the 19th Party Congress in 2017. The “new developments” indicated Xi’s increasing influence in policymaking, and new changes and directions in China’s socioeconomic and foreign policies brought about by Xi. “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” was not upgraded to “Xi Jinping Thought”, which would have equated it with “Mao Zedong Thought”, nor was Xi awarded any new designation. Xi promoted Chen Wenqing, the 62-year-old minister of state security, to the Politburo. Chen, who also secured a seat in the CCP Central Secretariat, started to head the party’s top security body, the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission. Wang Xiaohong, China’s police chief, also joined the Central Secretariat. The appointments underlined Beijing’s growing security concern in the face of tensions with the United States and its allies. Many technocrats with backgrounds in military, aerospace industries, public health, environmental engineering or other strategic industries were promoted into the Politburo in 2022. Ma Xingrui, Zhang Guoqing and Yuan Jiajun all rose through the aerospace industry, while Yin Li was a highly experienced health professional. Li Ganjie studied nuclear safety and worked as an engineer at the National Nuclear Safety Administration before. Liu Guozhong majored in artillery system fuse design and manufacturing, and has a graduate degree from the Harbin Institute of Technology. Chen Jining earned his Ph.D. degree in civil and environmental engineering at Imperial College London. Their promotions reflect the rising priority of industrial innovation and national security in the Xi administration. The 20th Party Congress confirmed the rise of a new cohort of technocratic elites, who can be defined as “technocrats 2.0”, to the national leadership in Xi’s third term. As compared to their predecessors since Deng’s era, “technocrats 2.0” often have expertise in military and aerospace technology, nuclear technology, medical and biochemical science, information technology, 5G, robotics, environmental science, and artificial intelligence. Many of them have also spent many years –– and in most cases more than two decades –– serving as executives in China’s flagship SOEs and competing in the global market (Li 2022).

3.2 The Rise of the “Aerospace Clique”

41

3.2 The Rise of the “Aerospace Clique” Actually, during Xi’s first term between 2012 and 2017, some accomplished aerospace engineers and scientists like Ma Xingrui, Zhang Guoqing, Wang Yong, Chen Qiufa, Xu Dazhe and Zhang Qingwei had already been sitting in the elite CCP Central Committee. The re-emergence of an “aerospace clique” largely happened when Xi consolidated his political power in his first term. Tracing back to prominent figures such as Qian Xuesen and Ding Henggao, China’s space and missile industry has enjoyed high political standing since the late 1950s, but it was the engineers in civilian industries rather than their peers from aerospace and aviation sectors that dominated the CCP leadership during the Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao years. Yuan Jiajun, Ma Xingrui, Xu Dazhe, Chen Qiufa, Zhang Qingwei and Wang Yong all served as senior executives of China Aerospace Corporation (CASC) prior to their career transitions into provincial or ministerial politics. Most of these aerospacepoliticians either played direct or supervisory role in the development and implementation of key aerospace programs, such as China’s manned space, lunar exploration, or the C919 “big aircraft” project. In Xi’s first and second term, all of them assumed important provincial or ministerial positions. Yuan Jiajun joined the Ministry of Aerospace Industry in 1984 after he graduated from Beijing Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics with the major in aircraft design and applied mechanics. He had overseas study experience at the German Aerospace Center, and in April 2000, he was named commander of the Shenzhou manned spaceflight program. He became vice-president of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation in 2007, and became involved in the Lunar Mission and the join Chinese-Russian mission to explore Mars. He was involved in provincial politics in 2012, when he joined the party standing committee in northeast Ningxia region. He became the executive vice governor of the affluent Zhejiang province in 2014, and three years later, he was appointed governor of Zhejiang province. The aerospace engineer became party secretary of Zhejiang in 2020, and after he joined the Politburo at the 20th Party Congress, he was transferred to become party chief in southwest Chongqing municipality. Ma Xingrui got his doctoral degree in mechanics at the Harbin Institute of Technology in 1988, and later on became a professor and vice president of the Institute. Ma led the Shijian 5 satellite project as chief engineer from 1996 to 1999. He was appointed as the deputy general manager of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation between 1999 and 2007, and was promoted to general manager in 2007. In 2013, he took several posts concurrently as vice minister of Industry and Information Technology, director of the China National Space Administration, director of the China Atomic Energy Authority, and director of the State Administration for Science, Technology, and Industry for National Defense (Brookings 2022). Then he worked as the deputy party secretary of Guangdong province for eight years, and

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in 2017 he was promoted to governor of Guangdong province. He became party secretary of Xinjiang autonomous region in 2021 and entered the Politburo at the 20th Party Congress. Zhang Qingwei studied aircraft design at the Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU) in Xi’an city from 1978 to 1982, and after graduation, he was assigned to No. 603 Research Institute of the Ministry of Aerospace Industry, designing aircraft tails (Zhang and Alon 2011, p. 245). Within three years he became the leader of a team that developed the FBC-1 fighter-bomber. Later he joined the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), the birthplace of China’s Long March rocket. In 1990 he was credited with the successful launch of the AsiaSat 1 satellite on a Long March rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre for the American satellite manufacturer Hughes, which marked the first time for the Long March rocket to successfully launch a foreign satellite. Later Zhang was tasked with developing the Long March 2 rocket for China’s manned space program known as the Shenzhou program. He became the deputy general manager of the newly established China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) in 1999, and was appointed president of CASC in 2001. In 2007 Zhang was appointed head of the Commission for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (COSTIND), one of the youngest ministers in China’s State Council. He became governor of Hebei province in 2012 and party secretary of Heilongjiang province in 2017. In 2021, he was appointed party secretary of the central China’s Hunan province. With important experience of being party secretary in two provinces, Zhang surprisingly failed to join the Politburo at the 20th Party Congress. Wang Yong studied electrical engineering at Beijing Radio and Television University from 1979 to 1982, and he continued his post-graduate study at the Harbin Institute of Technology from 1989 to 1992. In 1997, Wang was transferred to the China Aerospace Corporation, where he worked as the deputy director for the political department. Later he was promoted as the deputy general manager of the corporation, and in 2003 he became deputy director of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) of the State Council. He was promoted to director of SASAC in 2010 and a State Councillor in 2013. Xu Dazhe obtained a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in engineering from the Harbin Institute of Technology. He began his career in the Ministry of Aerospace Industry in 1984 as a technical designer, and in 2007, he was named chief executive of the China Aerospace Science & Industry Corporation. In 2013 he was named vice minister of Industry and Information Technology, chief administrator of the China National Space Administration, and the head of the State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence. In 2016, he became the governor of Hunan province, and in 2020, Xu was appointed as the party secretary of Hunan province. Chen Qiufa, a member of the Miao minority, studied radar countermeasure at the National University of Defense Technology in Changsha. After graduation in 1978, he started to work for the Ministry of Aerospace Industry as an engineer. He worked for CASC from 1994 to 1998 before he joined the COSTIND. He became

3.2 The Rise of the “Aerospace Clique”

43

deputy director of COSTIND in 2005 and director of the China National Space Administration in 2010. He joined provincial politics in 2013 by becoming chairman of the People’s Political Consultative Conference in Hunan Province. In 2017 he became party secretary of the Liaoning province. Hao Peng studied aircraft manufacturing at the Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi’an city from 1978 to 1982, and worked as a technician at the flight control system factory of the Aviation Industry Corporation of China in Lanzhou, Gansu province after graduation. Later on he rose through the ranks in Gansu and became the vice mayor of the provincial capital Lanzhou. He became vice chairman (governor) of the Tibet Autonomous Region in 2003, and governor of neighbouring Qinghai province in 2013. In 2016, he was appointed as the party secretary of the SASAC, and in 2019, he became the chairman (minister) of SASAC. In November 2022, he was transferred to become the party secretary of Liaoning province. Since he has experience of being a minister and a provincial party secretary, and sat in the CCP Central Committee for two terms, it is likely for him to be promoted into the Politburo at the 21st Party Congress scheduled in 2027. Huang Qiang studied aviation electrical engineering at the Northwestern Polytechnical University from 1979 to 1983, and then worked as an engineer for designing at the Ministry of Aviation Industry, the predecessor of the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC). He rose through the ranks in the AVIC system and in 2006 and 2008, he became the secretary-general and deputy director of the Commission for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense. He joined local politics in 2014 when he was appointed deputy governor of Gansu Province. In 2018, he served as executive deputy governor of Henan Province, and in 2021, Huang was named the Governor of Sichuan province. Zhang Hongwen, born in 1975, studied missile and carrier rocket design at the Beihang University (previously the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics). A former deputy director of the China Aerospace Science & Industry Corporation Limited (CASIC), he led China’s cruise missile research and development, and in 2014, he won the Tech Innovator of the Year award at the China Central Television (CCTV) Science & Technology Award Ceremony. He was parachuted to Anhui as vice governor in 2019. His vice governor portfolio included military-civil fusion and promotion of technological innovation. Cheng Fubo, born in 1970, studied industrial engineering at the Nanjing College of Aeronautics from 1988 to 1992, and after graduation, he worked in an aircraft assembly factory in Chengdu that was affiliated to the Ministry of Aviation and Aerospace Industry. Since then, he had worked on China’s commercial aircraft manufacturing project for more than two decades before he was parachuted to northwest Shaanxi province as vice governor in 2020. In 2022, he was transferred to the affluent Guangdong province to be the chief of the provincial party committee’s organisation department.

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3.3 Technocrats in Other Industries Besides the “aerospace clique,” tech elites from other military industries were also rising fast in Xi’s time. Zhang Guoqing, once an arms dealer in the Middle East, and Liu Guozhong, an expert on artillery system fuse design, were promoted into the Politburo at the 20th Party Congress. Zhang studied electrical engineering at the Changchun Institute of Optical Mechanics (now Changchun University of Science and Technology), and then worked for the China North Industries Corporation (Norinco), which markets China’s weaponary products internationally and is engaged in domestic military defense projects. Zhang once worked in the company’s office in Tehran, and in 2004, he was promoted to be the chief executive of Norinco. In 2007, he became one of the youngest alternate member of the CCP’s Central Committee, and in 2012 when Xi came to power, Zhang became a full member of the Central Committee. Soon after that, he joined provincial politics and was appointed deputy party chief of Chongqing municipality. Along with Ma Xingrui, Zhang was the only provincial-level deputy party chief with a full seat on the Central Committee (2012–2017). In 2018, he was appointed as mayor of Tianjin municipality, and two years later, he became party secretary of Liaoning province. Liu Guozhong majored in artillery system fuse design and manufacturing at the Nanjing Institute of Technology, and continued his postgraduate study on metal processing at the Harbin Institute of Technology. He started his political career in Heilongjiang provincial government, and in 2011 he became the vice governor of Heilongjiang. In 2013, he was transferred to Beijing to be a member of the Secretariat of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, and in 2016, he was transferred again to become deputy party secretary of Sichuan province. Ten months later, he was transferred to Jilin province to become governor. In December 2017, he was appointed as governor of Shaanxi province, and three years later, he was appointed as the party secretary of Shaanxi province. Li Ganjie studied industrial physics and nuclear safety at the Tsinghua University, and after receiving a master’s degree, he became an engineer at the National Nuclear Safety Administration’s Beijing office. He had two-year experience of studying nuclear safety in France, and in 1999 and 2000, he worked at the Chinese embassy in France, specializing in technology affairs. Then he was transferred to the State Administration for Environmental Protection, predecessor of the Ministry of Environmental Protection. He then took on a series of leading positions specializing in nuclear safety, eventually rising to director of the National Nuclear Safety Administration in 2006. In 2008, he became vice minister of Environmental Protection, and in 2016, he was appointed as deputy party secretary of Hebei province. In 2017, he became minister of Environmental Protection, the youngest cabinet minister in the State Council at that time. In 2020, he was appointed the governor of Shandong province and one year later, he became the party secretary of the same province. At the 20th Party Congress in 2022, he became the youngest member of the Politburo at the age of

3.3 Technocrats in Other Industries

45

57. Due to such age advantage, he has a good chance of joining the apex Politburo Standing Committee at the 21st Party Congress or even emerging as a successor to Xi Jinping or Li Qiang. Another environment-related technocrat is Chen Jilin, who studied environmental engineering at the Tsinghua University, then at Brunel University London, and next at Imperial College London where he earned a Ph.D. degree in civil and environmental engineering in 1993. Between 1993 and 1998, he worked as a research assistant at Imperial College London, and after that, he rose through the ranks at the Tsinghua University till 2012 when he became the president of the university. He is the only Politburo member who got a Ph.D. degree from a western university. In 2015, he was appointed minister of Environmental Protection, then the youngest cabinet minister in the State Council. In 2017 he became mayor of Beijing municipality, and after he joined the Politburo at the 20th Party Congress, he was transferred to the post of Shanghai party secretary, an important stepping stone to the top positions in the Politburo Standing Committee. The rise of environmental engineers like Li Ganjie and Chen Jilin, both having experiences of leading the Ministry of Environmental Protection, indicates China’s new policy focus on ecological conservation in Xi Jinping’s time. At the closing ceremony of the National People’s Congress (NPC) annual session in 2018, Xi vowed to build a beautiful China where the skies are bluer, the land is greener, and the waters are clearer. To change the image of prioritizing development agencies while marginalizing environmental departments in domestic politics, the top leadership in March 2018 restructured the Ministry of Environmental Protection into a new Ministry of Ecological Environment, which took power from the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) on issues such as climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Chinese senior officials with medical training, including Yin Li and Shen Xiaoming, gradually caught public attention. Yin Li had studied at the Shandong Medical College before he earned a graduate degree in public health administration in the Soviet Union. In 1993, he began working at the State Council Research Office. Between 2002 and 2003 he went to the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health as a visiting scholar, and starting from 2003, he rose through the ranks at the Ministry of Health where he became a vice minister in 2008. In 2012, he was named head of the State Drug Administration, and in 2015, he joined provincial politics by becoming deputy party secretary of Sichuan province. In 2016, Yin became the governor of Sichuan province, the first provincial Governor to swear allegiance to China’s Constitution as part of his inauguration ceremony. In 2020, he was transferred to southeast Fujian province to become party secretary, and at the 20th Party Congress, he joined the Politburo and later he was appointed party secretary of Beijing municipality. Shen Xiaoming obtained a degree in paediatrics from the Wenzhou Medical College and then he went to Shanghai Jiaotong University and got a doctoral degree in paediatric medicine. He then became president of the Second Medical University of Shanghai, and executive vice president of Shanghai Jiaotong University. He then entered the commission on education and health of Shanghai, and was appointed

46

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vice mayor of Shanghai municipality in 2008. He became vice minister of Education In 2016 and governor of Hainan province in 2017. He was appointed party secretary of Hainan province in 2020. The experts on security-related aerospace, military, environment, nuclear, and medical industries carry significant prestige in China, so the promotion of an “aerospace clique” and other technocrats helps boost the CCP’s legitimacy. Xi’s pursuit of the Chinese “space dream” has paid political dividends to those who worked to advance his agenda (Clay 2022). From an organizational point of view, transplanting aerospace, environmental and medical technocrats into provincial government possibly helps reduce nepotism and corruption at the local level. Engineers and scientists have long worked in relatively shielded environment with fewer interactions with local politics and interest groups. Technocrats like Li Ganjie, Yin Li and Chen Jining only had research or managerial experiences in central-level institutes or foreign countries before they were parachuted to senior positions in provincial politics. Moreover, their broad exposure to how Chinese research institutes and state-owned enterprises function also brings them practical experience that is readily translatable to the management of such entities at the provincial level. Their technical backgrounds also make them perfect agents to facilitate and implement Xi Jinping’s self-reliance strategy at the provincial level.

3.4 An Expanding Techno-security Concept The rise of the technocrats in military, aeronautics, public health, environmental and other security-related industries indicates the expansion of national security concept in Xi Jinping’s time and the emergence of the techno-security state under the CCP rule. About one year after Xi came to power, the CCP’s third plenum in November 2013 established a new Central National Security Commission (CNSC) chaired by Xi himself. At the first meeting of the CNSC, Xi underlined not only the importance of national security in the classical sense: a strong military able to defend the country, but also the connection between national security and economic development: “Development is the foundation for security, and security is a condition for development. Only a prosperous country can have a strong military, and only a strong military can protect the country.” (Tiezzi 2014) Xi’s push for the CNSC deviated from CCP norms and practices under Hu Jintao to the extent of altering the widely accepted rules of the game (You 2014). The establishment of the CNSC was an endeavour to enhance central power, to tackle institutional inadequacies, and to cope with the changed security landscape. From the CCP’s perspective, the impact of internal and non-traditional security challenges is as threatening as the external and traditional ones, while the fragmented national security leadership in Hu Jintao’s rein created faulty zones in command, control and communication among different agencies that may be detrimental to the national security. The establishment of the CNSC, which is sensitive to the

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CCP’s perception of security and operates within a top-down organizational pyramid, uplifted the importance of national security in China’s policymaking, prioritising security-related issues and personnel in the top-level decision making. The establishment of the CNSC is a major regrouping of the CCP’s top power structure along the lines of power recentralisation and a reflection of China’s “overall national security concept” in Xi’s new era. The security concept not only covers conventional topics including politics, territorial management, the military, economics, technology, ecology, natural resources, nuclear safety, culture and social affairs, but has expanded to new fields of outer space, the deep seas, polar regions, biology, and overseas interests (Wuthnow 2022). In a speech at the Central Party School in 2019, Xi Jinping signaled that China would inevitably undergo “all manner of struggles” over the next three decades before it becomes a “powerful socialist country” (South China Morning Post 2019), hinting continued frictions with the US and other Western powers. In preparation for such “great struggles,” the CCP reinforced Leninist control of state apparatus at various levels, corporations, civil society, the media and the academics. In his political report at the 20th Party Congress, Xi used the term “security” (anquan) 91 times, up from 19th Party Congress’ 55 times in 2017, while his use of the word “reform” declined to 51 from 69 (Fig. 3.1). That China was in a “period of strategic opportunity” (zhanlue jiyuqi) was no longer mentioned, expressing the Party’s anxieties about an increasingly volatile world amid the United States’ perception of China as the preeminent threat to US primacy. Neither did he say that “peace and development remain the themes of the era”. The “period of strategic opportunity” and “peace and development” as the “themes of the era” were included in Xi’s political report at the 19th Party Congress in 2017 and Hu Jintao’s report at the 18th Party Congress in 2012. “Period of strategic opportunity” implied that China faced no imminent risk of major conflict Development Corruption Struggle Military (junshi) Self-confidence Security Opening-up Reform 0

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Fig. 3.1 Key Word Counts in the Political Report at 18th, 19th and 20th Party Congress. Source Compiled by the Author

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and could focus more on economic growth. In the longer period of reform, party leaders had announced that “peace and development remain the themes of the era”, suggesting that the stable international environment allowed China to focus on economic development instead of war preparation. Xi’s 20th Party Congress report emphasised political, economic, military, technological, cultural and social security, putting China in a crisis mode by warning of “black swan” and “gray rhino” risks in a dangerous and unstable world, justifying that strong leadership will put security first and steer the Party through the rough seas. Xi described the country as being confronted by “drastic changes in the international landscape, especially external attempts to blackmail, contain, blockade and exert maximum pressure on China”. China has “shown a fighting spirit and a firm determination to never yield to coercive power”, he said (The Straits Times 2022). Facing different types of security hazards like the COVID-19 pandemic and intensified tension with the United States, China has been relying more on its indigenous technological innovation and other domestic capabilities. China’s 14th Five-Year Plan (FYP, 2021–25) and a 2035 development vision with mid- and long-term goals, two strategic plans for the whole government, notably have a strong focus on technology and innovation. For many decades, China’s leaders have seen science and technology (S&T) as critical to its modernisation agenda. It is even more so in Xi’s time when China is focusing more on self-reliance and domestic capacities. Both plans aimed to overcome the “middle-income trap”, a development stage in which a developing country attains a certain level of income but then stagnates and fails when it fails to complete industrialisation and modernisation because it cannot progress from low-cost manufacturing to high-technology industries. China’s confidence in relying on domestic technological capabilities partially comes from its advancement in science and technology in the 13th FYP period (2016–2020) (Table 3.3), and its economic miracles in the past four decades. Since the beginning of 2020 the Chinese leadership has given particular emphasis to the “dual circulation strategy”, which stresses “domestic circulation” over “international circulation”, an export-oriented policy adopted since the 1990s that had fuelled China’s growth and forged its economic connections with the outside world. The “dual circulation strategy” was an inevitable policy consequence from the reemergence of the Chinese techno-security state in Xi’s time. The techno-security state refers to an innovation-centred, security maximising regime that prioritises the building of technological, defence and national security (covering matters such as intelligence, internal security, cyber and surveillance) capabilities to meet expansive national security requirements based on perceptions of heightened threats and on the powerful influence of domestic pro-security coalitions (Cheung 2022, p. 165). As China goes through different stages of development, its S&T system evolves as well, driven by new aspirations, changing security landscapes and surging resources. In Xi’s time, the techno-security regime has been restructured on the basis of the integration of internal and external security capabilities, civilian and military industries as well as Party and state apparatus.

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Table 3.3 China’s Technological and Scientific Progress (2016–2020) 1. China ranks 14th in Global Innovation Index 2. The only middle-income country included in the top 30 for years 3. The contribution rate of scientific and technological progress to economic growth reached 59.5% in 2019, up 4.2 percentage points from that of 2015. It is expected to meet its target of 60% in 2020 4. China’s total expenditure on R&D (research and development) had grown from 1.4 trillion yuan in 2015 to 2.214 trillion yuan in 2019, up 56.3% 5. In 2019, 361,000 invention patents were granted to domestic users, ranking first in the world, up from 263,000 in 2015 6. China filed 59,000 international patent applications via the Patent Cooperation Treaty, twice that of 2015 to become the world’s top patent filer 7. China also ranked second both in the number of scientific papers and total number of top-cited scientific papers 8. China has maintained the world’s largest pool of R&D personnel for seven years. In 2019, it had a workforce of 4.61 million in R&D, an increase of 22.6% over 2015 9. China features 17 world-leading technology clusters, among which Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou and Beijing rank world’s second and fourth, respectively 10. By 28 September 2020, some 179 Chinese companies were listed on the science and technology innovation board, raising 267.8 billion yuan 11. Enterprises in China’s 169 high-tech development zones achieved total revenue of 12 trillion yuan in 2019, accounting for over 10% of China’s economy 12. Other advances included the successful launch of the Tiangong II space lab, commissioning of the deep-sea manned submersible Jiaolong, launch of the five-hundred-metre aperture spherical telescope Tianyan, the dark matter probe satellite Wukong, the quantum science satellite Micius, the test flight of the airliner C919, the full-scale global services provided by Beidou Navigation Satellite System and the first-ever soft landing on the far side of the moon made by Chang’e 4 probe, and the construction of over 500,000 5G base stations Source China Daily (2020)

The CCP has increasingly relied upon a technology-driven development strategy to protect its own security. This techno-nationalist strategy is mission-oriented but market-supported and globally engaged. Mission-oriented programs have clearly specified goals and research areas in line with government strategies, though such programs also strive for academic excellence and economic efficiency. Mission-oriented programs include national High Technology Program (or “863 Program”), National Key Basic Research Program (or “973 Program”), National Key Technologies Program, which began in 1984, and National Major Scientific Research Program, which began in 2006 (Zhao 2014). These mission-oriented programs by design have different research priorities and areas in spite of an overlap in some cases. In 2008, the CCP Organisation Department launched the “1000-Talents Scheme” to attract research talents from overseas. Meanwhile China’s R&D personnel number and funding have grown substantially together with the increase of patents and internationally referred journal papers (Table 3.3).

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Scientists and technological personnel are indispensable for the implementation of such strategy targeted at core and emerging critical technologies. In the context of Chinese techno-nationalism, technocrats with “command technology” backgrounds are deemed as eligible leaders in guiding the nation’s pursuit of technological innovation. The promotion of these technocrats to the level of national leadership also has symbolic implications: essential engineers and managers involved in China’s techno-security projects like strategic weaponry R&D and ecological protection can be awarded handsomely in their political careers. Xi’s preference over these technocrats sends a clear signal to the bureaucracy that all cadres should vigorously implement the national technology strategy and the plan on integration of military and civilian development. With the establishment of a new commission in January 2017 in charge of the military-civil fusion (MCF), Xi aimed to nurture Chinese defence manufacturers that are comparable to Lockheed Martin and Boeing in the United States and develop a military-industrial complex for the military modernisation commensurate with its rising international profile. The reform gives arms production licences to more civilian enterprises (both state-owned and private), while allowing more state-owned military industrial enterprises to produce more commodities and services for civilian use. The reform is part of Xi’s ambition to restructure state-owned enterprises (SOEs); many military industrial enterprises have been converted to SOEs manufacturing civilian products in the reform era. China has many military-related SOEs which are commercial conglomerates that engage in machinery manufacturing, agriculture, telecommunications, property development, finance and foreign trade. Some military-owned companies were not economically efficient, while others were using political privileges to gain unfair leverages vis-à-vis their civilian competitors. The reform is designed to create a level playing field for both military and civilian enterprises, and in this context, senior managers in charge of well-performed security-related SOEs are being promoted politically to incentivise their peers to boost efficiency and innovation in these SOEs. Their broad exposure to centrallevel SOE management brings them practical experience that is readily translatable to the management of industrial enterprises at the provincial level. Their defense industry experiences make them perfect agents to implement Xi’s MCF strategy in the provincial regions. Almost all the prominent technocrats in the clique of aerospace, aviation and other military industries have the working experiences in the defence-related SOEs like the China Aerospace Science and Technology (CASC) and China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC). Ma Xingrui, Yuan Jiajun, Zhang Qingwei, and Xu Dazhe all served as senior executives of CASC prior to their career transitions into provincial politics. These political appointees played supervisory roles in the development of key aerospace and aviation programs, such as China’s manned space, lunar exploration, or, in Zhang Qingwei’s case, the C919 “big aircraft” project, and for Zhang Hongwen, systems engineering leadership for the Yingji-18 (YJ-18) supersonic antiship cruise missile (Clay 2022). These people’s local governance portfolios often

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include national security work, military-civil fusion and technological innovation. When Zhang Hongwen was appointed as vice governor of Anhui province, he was often seen inspecting provincial industrial enterprises, executing S&T policies, and pressing for the commercialization of technology innovation. When Xu Dazhe was party secretary of Hunan province, he sometimes presided over the national security meeting of the provincial party committee, conveying Xi’s message on the “overall national security concept” to the party cadres in Hunan province.

3.5 The Limits of Chinese Technocracy There has been a great deal of debate regarding the effectiveness and limits of technocratic governance around the world. Some scholars see the development of a technocratic ideology based on instrumental reason as a means to end social conflict, thereby facilitating democratic or pluralistic politics (Burhnam 1960). Other analysts contend that the technocratic elite would either prove unable to challenge political leadership or would be transformed by its participation in governance (Galbraith 1965; Bell 1974; Price 1985). Technical and scientific rationalities can form a new means of social control that delegated the individual subject to the status of functional object (Marcuse 1964). Some also questions the strength of authoritarian technocracy in pushing through the state-led developmentalism in developing countries (Schlogl & Kim 2021). When Chinese technocrats are seeking to foster the growth of high-value adding sectors and to stimulate growth-enhancing structural transformation using industrial policies, they do so within an increasingly constrained domestic policy space. Despite the CCP Third Plenum’s decision to allow the market to play a decisive role in the allocation of resources, market-reform progress remained stagnated in the past decade. According to a 20,000-word document detailing decisions finalized at the Third Plenum of the 18th CCP Central Committee in 2013, the leadership endorsed a package of 6o overhaul tasks, which included introducing more private investment into banking and other state-owned enterprises (SOEs), establishing a unified urban and rural construction land market that allowed farmers to trade their land rights, loosening of interest rate and price controls, and claiming larger shares of dividends from state enterprises for social welfare purposes. The document required “decisive results” to be attained by 2020. In reality, not only China’s progress toward market economy norms slowed in most areas, its investment openness has decreased due to the restrictions on direct investment and portfolio investment and the crackdown on technology firms (Atlantic Council and Rhodium Group 2022). It’s unrealistic to expect the empowerment of the technocratic elite to bring about the liberal market or political reform in China. With purposive or means rationality, they focus on technical and instrumental actions rather than structural reforms and redistributive issues. The technocratic model of objective necessity that replaces

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the decisionistic model of politics can lead to the "scientification of politics" and inevitably produces an authoritarian political framework (Habermas 1970). They perceive many governance problems as being solvable, often proposing technologyfocused solutions. Technocratisation serves to depoliticise a divisive policy-making process by focusing only on technical solutions instead of systematic overhauls. The rise of technocracy enhances the CCP’s authoritarian feature and further shrinks the domestic policy space for socioeconomic structural transformation. Technocrats support Xi’s Maoist governance that keeps tightening limits to discussions of ideas such as democracy and freedom of speech. As Xi himself does not have a strong factional background, he tends to promote technocrats with certain detachment from factional politics, which leads them to have greater loyalty to the top leadership. Technocrats are not interested in public policy debates, where a range of views is allowed, and are meticulous about the implementation of policies from Xi’s leadership. Economic performances also become less relevant, as most technocrats are directly involved in specific R&D projects in their early career rather than local economic development. Factional factors based on provinces are increasingly giving way to technocratic backgrounds in the CCP’s promotion of cadres, but technocracy cannot end factional competition with the CCP. The reinforced technocratic momentum seems to support the viewpoints focusing on educational and professional qualifications, disrupting the previously prevailing factional politics based on guanxi and network politics. However, in Xi’s first two terms, region-based factional background still played a crucial role in determining many of his protégés’ career advancement. Most senior leaders are linked to places where Xi stayed, studied or made his career advancement, including Shaanxi province, Tsinghua University (Beijing), Fujian province, Zhejiang province, Shanghai city and the Central Party School (Beijing). As the former factions seem to have disappeared, new factions under Xi’s supreme umbrella of power are beginning to emerge, with the faction of Fujian, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Shaanxi, Tsinghua, Central Party School and the military-industrial group being identified. As the paramount leader, Xi likes to see his followers to be divided up into competing groups, which would underline, rather than undermine, his supreme status, power, and authority (Wu 2022). Technocrats are neither corruption-proof nor free from factional politics. Factional politics will continue to function as checks and balances with the CCP, and constrain technocrats’ role in policy making and implementation. Tensions between technocrats with S&T training and officials with humanities and social science education may escalate due to their differences in mentality and governance style. The rising technocracy cannot diffuse region-based factional politics, which has lasted in China for centuries. China’s pursuit of indigenous S&T innovation is the main driving force behind the political rise of technocrats, but the empowerment of officials with S&T backgrounds does not necessarily bring about the technological breakthroughs the country wants. Facing sanctions and confrontations from the United States and its allies, Chinese technocrats will find it difficult to make use of previous innovation model

References

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that combines domestic research with technological transfer. In this process, technocrats tend to espouse a realistic outlook on international relations, and once they fail to make technological breakthroughs needed for China’s modernisation, they will hold more aggressive postures toward western countries, leading to offensive foreign and security policy. Powerful technocrats enhances vested interest in certain tech sectors, resulting in overinvestment in inefficient R&D projects and underinvestment in social welfare. China is in a fiscal crisis, hobbled by internal contradictions left by decades of piecemeal, incremental reform that have left local governments underfunded and tied down by contradictory policies. With a slowing economy and a shrinking and aging population, the Chinese government is facing enormous fiscal pressure to fund gigantic infrastructure projects, tax rebates and the national social welfare system. If the governmental expenditure continues to tilt toward military-related S&T projects, people’s well-beings will not be taken good care of, which contradicts the motto the Party emphasises.

References Atlantic Council and Rhodium Group. 2022. China Pathfinder 2022 Annual Report. Oct 2022. https://issuu.com/atlanticcouncil/docs/china_pathfinder_annual_2022. Accessed 2 Feb 2023. Bell, D. 1974. The Coming of Post-industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting. London: Heinemann. Brookings. 2022. Ma Xingrui. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/20thparty congress_ma_xingrui.pdf. Accessed 5 Jan 2023. Burhnam, James. 1960. The Managerial Revolution. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. Cheung, Tai Ming. 2022. The rise of the Chinese techno-security state. In CCP Futures: The New Era of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, ed. Frank No. Pieke and Bert Hofman, 165–171. Singapore: East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore. Clay, Marcus. 2022. The Re-emergence of an ‘Aerospace Clique’ in Chinese Politics? The Diplomat, 19 Feb 2022. https://thediplomat.com/2022/02/the-re-emergence-of-an-aerospace-clique-in-chi nese-politics/. Accessed 4 Jan 2023. China Daily. 2020. “China’s sci-tech progress during 13th Five-Year Plan (2016–20). https://govt. chinadaily.com.cn/s/202010/22/WS5f90f34b498eaba5051bc0a5/technological-and-scientificprogress-during-the-13th-five-year-plan.html. Accessed 1 Dec 2022. Galbraith, John. 1965. The Scientific Estate. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Habermas, Jirgen. 1970. Toward a Rational Society. Boston: Beacon Press. Li, Cheng. 2022. Chinese Technocrats 2.0: How Technocrats Differ between the Xi Era and Jiang-Hu Eras. China-US Focus, 6 September 2022. https://www.chinausfocus.com/2022CCP-congress/chinese-technocrats-20-how-technocrats-differ-between-the-xi-era-and-jianghu-eras. Accessed 3 Jan 2023. Marcuse, Herbert. 1964. One Dimensional Man. Boston: Beacon Press. Price, Donald. 1985. The New Industrial State, 4th ed. New York: NAL. Schlogl, Lukas, and Kyunghoon Kim. 2021. After authoritarian technocracy: The space for industrial policy-making in democratic developing countries. Third World Quarterly. https://doi.org/10. 1080/01436597.2021.1984876.

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South China Morning Post. 2019. Xi Jinping rallies China for decades-long ‘struggle’ to rise in global order, amid escalating US trade war. https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/art icle/3025725/xi-jinping-rallies-china-decades-long-struggle-rise-global. Accessed 15 Jan 2023. The Straits Times. 2022. President Xi puts China in crisis mode, even as his continuing rule is secure. https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/president-xi-puts-china-in-crisis-modeeven-as-his-continuing-rule-is-secure. Accessed 12 Jan 2023. Tiezzi, Shannon. 2014. China’s National Security Commission Holds First Meeting. The Diplomat, https://thediplomat.com/2014/04/chinas-national-security-commission-holdsfirst-meeting/. Accessed 16 Jan 2023. Wu, Guoguang. 2022. New Faces of Leaders, New Factional Dynamics: CCP Leadership Politics Following the 20th Party Congress. China Leadership Monitor, Issue 74. Wuthnow, Joel. 2022. Securitisation and Governance in the Xi Jinping Era. In CCP Futures: The New Era of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, 149–156, Frank No. Pieke and Bert Hofman ed. Singapore: East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore. You, Ji. 2014. China’s Council of State Security: Evolution, rationality and Operations. Singapore: EAI Background Brief No. 905, East Asian Institute. Zhang, Wenxian, and Ilan Alon. 2011. Biographical Dictionary of New Chinese Entrepreneurs and Business Leaders. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. Zhao, Litao. 2014. “China’s Science and Technology System: Governance, Funding and Performance,” EAI Background Brief No. 926, East Asian Institute, Singapore.

Chapter 4

Technocracy and Future Leadership Succession

This chapter assesses how technocracy will reshape China’s future power reshuffling, and projects the line-up of next generation of top leaders to be emerged in the next 5–10 years. It focuses on the personnel changes at the 20th Party Congress in 2022, examining the new features of technocracy in China’s elite politics.

4.1 Models of Chinese Elite Politics For decades, China watchers have been trying to design the proper analytical framework for the understanding of China’s elite politics in reality. After late Tang Tsou (2002) advocated theorisation in the subfield of Chinese elite politics, substantial academic efforts have been made to understand the sinews of the country’s political systems (Goldstein 1991; Bo 2007). Tsou (2002) used winner-takes-all model to explain politics at various levels in China, which he argued that the struggle for power among the Chinese elite, involving either supreme political power or power one level below, always involves one side winning all and/or the other side losing all. His research evidence came from the study of the CCP’s history, which was marked by political turning points of total victory and total defeat, as distinguished from elite pluralism or day-to-day struggles for power or over policy. Mao established or consolidated his paramount authority in the CCP with his ultimate total victory over his rival Wang Ming in 1938, elimination of Liu Shaoqi in 1969 and wipeout of Lin Biao clique in 1971. Since supreme political power is considered one and indivisible, a political leader either has the absolute power or has none; there is nothing in between. In China’s zero-sum political game, the most important thing one would expect is the recurrent pattern of total victory and total defeat. The winner-takes-all model is powerful in revealing the life-or-death nature of CCP politics in the revolutionary and Mao’s era, but increasingly, less convincing in explaining elite politics in the reform era until the 20th Party Congress.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 G. Chen, Political Implications of China’s Technocracy in the Reform Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-2977-1_4

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Besides the winner-takes-all model, other paradigms were designed later on to explain Chinese elite politics. Rather than relying on the conventional reductionist methodology of focusing on the nature of the political actors and processes through which they interact, Goldstein (1991) proposed his models to theorise Chinese politics. Tied into his study are the twin concepts of bandwagon and balance of power. The model of bandwagoning prevails when a polity is hierarchically ordered, little functional specialization exists at the leadership level, and that top leadership controls a preponderance of political resources. In this structure, party cadres obeys the commands of the top leaders either because of the latter’s political authority and official status. The distribution of capabilities in such a polity is highly skewed in favour of dominating political factions, while the typical behaviour of subordinates is getting along, producing a bandwagon effect. In such a setting, lower-ranking officials rush to support the likely winner in a power struggle or to embrace the probable policy that the winner has chosen in order to ingratiate themselves with the victor. Driven by fear, awe and ambition, those on the losing side at the top hasten to join ranks with the triumphant. The bandwagoning model was used to mainly explain Chinese politics in Mao’s era, when critical masses of yes-men were generated by the political structure dominated by Mao’s utmost authority. Bandwagon theory helps explain the otherwise odd readiness of others, especially the top elite, to take their political cues from Mao even when his behaviour was judged unprincipled or his policy preference misguided (Goldstein 1991, p. 10). The balance-of-power model, however, provides factional explanations of politics in China, with political actors scurrying to find safety in coalitions formed to prevent the emergence of a dominant faction. The purges of Liu Shaoqi, Lin Biao and Deng Xiaoping in the Mao-in-command approach illustrate how disparate interests came together to oust perceived threats. The 9th, 10th, and 11th Party Congresses all represented attempts to keep one faction from emerging supreme. After Mao’s death and the end of the Cultural Revolution, balance-of-power politics, as compared to the bandwagoning model, appeared more salient in China. There are still significant differences between the balance-of-power and factional explanations: factional approaches focus on the attributes of the actors (i.e., essential characteristics of a faction) and the processes by which they interact (i.e., “rules of the game”), while balance-of-power theory focuses on the structure of the arena within which actors operate. It suggests that the patterns it explains endure as long as the arena remains anarchically ordered (Goldstein 1991, p. 12). The balance-of-power model seems less intuitive and convincing for some who are familiar with Chinese political culture, in which party officials seldom choose to join the loser instead of the winner. Bo (2007) proposed an alternative power balancing model for watching Chinese elite politics in the twenty-first century, arguing that the nature of elite politics in China has been fundamentally changed by political institutionalisation. Instead of envisioning a zero-sum game as in the model of the winner-takes-all, the power balancing model allows the possibility of a non-zero-sum political game, in which

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institutional loyalty can be separated from personal loyalty and may supersede personal loyalty. Instead of the winner of all in a game to win all, the political game could have multiple winners. The power balancing model differs from Goldstein’s balance-of-power theory fundamentally because the latter believes that the political structure is anarchic while the former explicitly assumes that the Chinese political structure is hierarchically organised and increasingly institutionalized. Scholars in this school tend to believe that the CCP itself has been undergoing a thorough “re-institutionalisation” in the reform era (McGregor 2010; Pieke 2009; Shambaugh 2008, Brødsgaard and Zheng 2006), which has restored the authority of political positions and substantial functional differentiation. These competing theoretical models have their respective advantages in explaining PRC‘s political dynamics in different eras. The models of winner-takes-all and bandwagon were extremely powerful in explaining Mao-in-command politics prior to the reform, while the balance-of-power model was useful for understanding elite politics in Deng Xiaoping‘s time. After the student-led Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, which were triggered by the death of pro-reform leader Hu Yaobang, the CCP drew lessons from the incident by adopting a collective leadership model that was more open towards policy debates in government and in society. The Chinese leaders who followed, including Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, moved away from strongman politics towards a power-sharing model at the top. More broadly, the CCP underwent a thorough shift—what was labelled “reinstitutionalisation”—led by senior leaders like Zeng Qinghong (China’s vice president under Hu Jintao), Li Yuanchao (vice president during the early years of Xi’s rule), and political theorist Wang Huning. The political game was transformed from the conventional winner-take-all model to a power-balancing model, in which all of the Politburo Standing Committee members were vested with almost equal political authority, resulting in more power-sharing and high-level checks and balances. The regime’s authoritarian feature was lessened by fragmented policy enforcement, relatively subdued censorship and abundant policy debates. This moved towards a semblance of inner-party democracy encouraged policy debates at various levels and pushed forward a decentralisation process that empowered local officials to promote economic development. Some observers described the process as an example of the CCP’s “authoritarian resilience” (Heilmann and Perry 2011; Nathan 2003; Shambaugh 2012; Wang and Tan 2013), in which a single leader could not dominate policy-making in all realms and had to share power with other colleagues in the Politburo and its Standing Committee—the party’s top bodies. The competing models of Goldstein’s balance-of-power and Bo’s power balancing are both convincing perspectives to understand Jiang and Hu’s politics of collective leadership and power sharing. Xi became a game changer in 2012, when he replaced Hu Jintao as CCP general secretary and started a “re-centralisation” process that consolidated his power as the core leader of the party. Facing political resistances from rival factions like the “Shanghai Gang” and the “Chinese Communist Youth League (CCYL)” clique, and a disgruntled society vexed by yawning income disparity and corruption, Xi borrowed

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from Mao’s tactical playbook by urging party cadres to reconnect with the common people and launching anti-corruption purges over key members in other factions. With the ruling party’s tightening control of the media and the rectification of ideology, opinion leaders in China have appeared more cautious than before about voicing different views over public policies or human rights. This has brought the move towards more robust policy debates within the CCP under Jiang and Hu to a screeching halt. The result: increased risks from policy blunders, since there are fewer checks and balances in place. Increasingly, the pendulum of CCP politics moved back to the bandwagoning model after the 18th Party Congress in 2012, and even winner-takes-all model after the 20th Party Congress in 2022. The comeback of Tsou’s winner-takes-all restructure in Xi’s new era will have profound impact upon power reshuffling in the future.

4.2 Technocracy Versus Xi-in-Command: A New Model of Career Advancement Xi achieved total victory at the cost of other factions’ total defeat in the 20th Party Congress (Table 3.1). He not only unprecedentedly confirmed his third term as CCP general secretary and CMC chairman, but also stacked the Politburo and its Standing Committee (PSC) with his loyalists. Jiang Zemin, the spiritual leader of the “Shanghai Gang,” passed away about one month after the Party Congress, while Hu Jintao, the 79-year-old predecessor of Xi and headman of the CCYL clique, was unexpectedly escorted out of Congress in front of the world media. Vice Premier Hu Chunhua, the one-time leadership contender from the CCYL clique, was left out of the Politburo in October 2022. No representative from the CCYL clique was included in the PSC at the Party Congress, while the only person associated with Jiang’s “Shanghai Gang” at the top was Wang Huning, who has converted himself into a steadfast advocator of Xi Jinping thought and policies. The number of PSC members with science and engineering training crept up from two at the 18th and 19th Party Congress to three at the 20th Party Congress (Fig. 2.1). Moreover, six senior officials with S&T experiences joined the Politburo at relatively young ages, and officials with technical expertise occupied 81 seats, nearly 40% of the total, in the new Central Committee (Fig. 4.1). Many of them are expected to occupy higher positions in the next five to ten years. Among the seven PSC members after the 20th Party Congress, Xi Jinping, Li Qiang and Ding Xuexiang were science and engineering degree holders. Xi himself had a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering, and a doctoral degree on a part-time basis in Marxist theory, while Li Qiang studied agricultural machinery as undergraduate student and later on got a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree. Ding Xuexiang had a bachelor’s degree in machinery manufacture engineering and

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60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Deng '82 Deng '87 Jiang '92 Jiang '97

Hu '02

Hu '07

Xi '12

Xi '17

Xi' 22

Fig. 4.1 The Share of Technocrats among Full Members of the CCP Central Committee (%). Source Cheng Li, Brookings Institution (The Wall Street Journal 2022)

later on acquired a master’s degree in science on a part-time basis. All of the three obtained higher degrees on part-time basis in their political career, and two (Xi and Li) had their part-time majors other than natural sciences and engineering. Nevertheless, this should not be deemed as an indication of the waning of technocracy trend at the top level, as all of them started their part-time studies in the 1990s, when the CCP organisation departments at that time encouraged cadres to continue postgraduate studies while working. After Xi came to power in 2012, the organisation departments no longer advocated such part-time studies on a large scale. Some argued that even those with a degree in a natural science or engineering may not be technocrats in strict sense, as real technocrats need not only specific academic training, but also relevant career background in specialist positions at functional organisations (Bo 2007, p. 103). In this regard, only Ding Xuexiang met this career requirement as he got his first job at the Shanghai Research Institute of Materials (SRIM), where he worked from 1982 to 1999. In contrast, Xi Jinping and Li Qiang joined party-state apparatus upon graduation. Nevertheless, such disjunction between cadres’ academic training and career development even preceded Xi’s time. Between 2002 and 2007, among the 72 full members in the CCP Central Committee with academic training in natural sciences and engineering, only 56 (78%) of them had career development in engineering, while the other 16 members (22%) had their career patterns in economic management or party-state affairs (Bo 2007, p. 104). Therefore, the career patterns of the 20th PSC members were actually the lingering effect from the personnel policies in Jiang and Hu’s era rather than the reflection of the new trend in Xi’s time. In reality, almost all the new members in the 20th Politburo with academic training in sciences and engineering had working experiences in related science and engineering departments. Ma Xingrui, Yuan Jiajun, Yin Li, Li Ganjie, Zhang Guoqing and Chen Jining were identified as real technocrats in the Politburo, as they had not only academic degrees in a natural science or engineering, but also a career background in specialist positions at functional organisations. Being an exception, Liu Guozhong

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did not have working experience in a specialist position. He started working at the economic commission of the Heilongjiang provincial government after receiving his master degree on metal processing at the Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT). In comparison, Ma Xingrui worked at the HIT for eight years after receiving his doctorate in mechanics there. After that, he was appointed Vice-Dean of Chinese Academy of Space Technology (CAST), and became the leader and chief engineer of the Shijian 5 satellite project. He also worked on various lunar missions when he was Chairman of the Sino Satellite Communications Company. He was the chief commander of the successful Chang’e 3 mission, China’s first lunar surface exploration. In 2007, he was promoted to General Manager of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), and in 2013 he was appointed Director of the China National Space Administration, Director of the China Atomic Energy Authority, Director of the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (SASTIND) and Vice-Minister of Industry and Information Technology. Only after he became a full member of the CCP Central Committee in 2012 did he leave his S&T posts for Guangdong province to serve as deputy party secretary of the province. Rocket scientist Yuan Jiajun also had many years of working experience in China’s aerospace program, where he was commander of the Shenzhou manned spaceflight program, and involved in the lunar mission and the join Chinese-Russian mission to explore Mars. Yuan was a visiting research fellow at the Institute of Mechanical Mechanics of the German Academy of Aeronautics and Astronautics from 1989–90 (Li 2022). Yin Li, a public health expert, graduated from the Semashko Research Institute of Social Hygiene, Economics and Public Health Management, Russian Academy of Medical Sciences where he completed a graduate program in health economics and health management and received a doctoral degree of Medical Science. He was also a visiting scholar at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health between 2002 and 2003, before he began work at China’s Ministry of Health (China Daily 2022). Nuclear scientist Li Ganjie not only studied industrial physics and nuclear safety at the Tsinghua University, where he received a master’s degree, but also worked as an engineer at China’s National Nuclear Safety Administration in Beijing office. He even went abroad to conduct research on nuclear safety at the French Institute of Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection from 1991 to 1992 and worked as First Secretary in the Science and Technology Division of the Chinese Embassy in France from 1999 to 2000. Zhang Guoqing and Liu Guozhong both majored in military technology as college students. After gaining some knowledge on international trade in the Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Zhang started to work as an arms dealer for the China North Industries Corporation (Norinco), one of China’s major military suppliers, in the Middle East. Liu majored in artillery system fuse design and manufacturing at the Nanjing Institute of Technology, and continued his postgraduate study at the Harbin Institute of Technology.

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Chen Jining received both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Environmental Engineering at Tsinghua University. Then he went to study at Brunel University London in 1988, and next at Imperial College London where he earned a Ph.D. degree in civil and environmental engineering in 1993. After that, he continued his postdoctoral study at Imperial College London for two years and then worked as research assistant for more than three years. He returned to China in 1998, working at the Tsinghua University for almost 17 years. Chen’s career pattern was uniquely academically oriented in the CCP Politburo, since he had never left university campus before he became the minister of environmental protection in 2015. The re-emergence of technocrats in Xi’s time reflects the growing importance of cadres’ educational and professional qualifications in their career development. For a long time, China watchers have different views on Chinese officials’ career advancement. One group claims that the possibility of promotion is determined by relationships (guanxi) and network politics (Chen 2006; Shih, Adolph, and Liu 2012). Another group argues that educational and professional qualifications play an increasing role (Landry 2008; Li and Zhou 2005; Yao 2017). A third group contends that economic performance is more important for promotion at lower levels of government, whereas patronage and political networks matter more at the central level (Choi 2012; Landry et al.2018). As for the new Politburo members with engineering and science backgrounds, political patronage from the top leadership still played a role in their rise, but the fundamental driving force behind their political success is their professional qualification. Xi himself studied at Tsinghua University, where he met his classmate Mr Chen Xi, who later on became the chief of the CCP Central Organization Department, which was in charge of the promotion of millions of CCP cadres. Through Tsinghua’s alumni network, Chen Xi may have placed Li Ganjie and Chen Jining under his patronage, but it’s hard to use this personal linkage to explain the promotion of other technocrats, especially those with aerospace and military industrial backgrounds, where Xi and his major political allies lack working experience or personal contacts. Actually, the CCP’s nomenklatura system has helped the Xi administration to nurture and promote a new cohort of technocrats systematically, especially through the ranks of the country’s flagship SOEs and top universities, during the past decade. The term is originally Russian and developed during the Soviet era. Harasymiew (1969, p. 494)’s classic definition of nomenklatura is “list of positions, arranged in order of seniority, including a description of the duties of each office”. In the Chinese context, perhaps a more precise definition is “a list containing those leading officials directly appointed by the Party as well as those officials about whom recommendations for appointment, release or transfer may be made by other bodies, but which require the Party’s approval” (Brødsgaard 2012, p. 633). The nomenklatura system is the key part of the CCP’s cadre management system. The available nomenklatura lists are all internal (neibu) and not open to the public, so it is almost impossible to find any publicly available Chinese discussions of the system even though the nomenklatura system is at the heart of the CCP-governed

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power system. Still, the composition of the CCP Central Committee is the essential part of the nomenklatura system, which reveals the updated criteria for promotion of cadres in leading positions. At the 20th Party Congress about one third of the CCP Central Committee members were technocrats with S & T backgrounds, higher than that of the previous three Central Committees (Li 2022). The nomenklatura system ensures CCP control of China’s political and economic institutions from top to bottom. The nomenklatura list may comprise two lists. The first is handled by the Party’s Organization Department; the second involves management by other state and Party organs. The Party focuses on the first list but also has veto power over the second (Brødsgaard 2012). The most important nomenklatura list is managed by the CCP Central Organization Department and consists of approximately 3500 positions at the vice-ministerial level and above (Chan 2004; Burns 2006). In combination with the cadre rotation system, the nomenklatura system ensures that all important personnel decisions and appointments are made by the CCP. It is an instrument to prevent regional and bureaucratic fragmentation. The central nomenklatura list includes Party secretaries and presidents of the largest state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and top universities. Thus these leaders are not appointed by their company/university boards or by the ministerial agency supervising them but by the CCP Central Organization Department. Chen Xi, a technocrat himself and Xi Jinping’s classmate at the Tsinghua University, was assumed to play a crucial role in promoting and transferring many technocrats to important political positions when he was head of the Central Organization Department and president of the Central Party School between 2017 and 2023. Even before that, since chiefs of gigantic SOEs and major universities were on the nomenklatura list, they had vice-ministerial status and were subject to the Party’s central cadre rotation system. Yuan Jiajun, Ma Xingrui and Chen Jining were among numerous cases where business executives or university leaders were transferred to government positions, such as vice governor/minister, or a Party position, such as provincial deputy Party secretary. This has caused scholars to claim that a “revolving door” is found between the Party, the government, and SOEs (Wang 2015). In fact, about one-fifth of the governors and vice governors have an SOE background, which indicates significant rotation between business and politics. The resurgence of technocrats in Xi’s time demonstrated the long-existing iron triangle of Party-business-technology relations, which consolidated the Party-led political system. Although some contend that most business executives tend to remain in state-owned industry and then retire directly, following a “one-way exit” rather than a “revolving door” (Leutert 2018), the increasing number of cases of parachuting SOE executives and university chiefs with technology backgrounds to Party and government positions indicates otherwise. Due to the sparse literature on the subject of nomenklatura (Brødsgaard et al. 2017; Leutert 2018), the study of technocrats’ career patterns helps observers better understand the opaque decision-making processes in nomenklatura appointments. In discussing the possibility of moving up the career ladder to join the administrative elite, Li and Walder (2001) focus on the time of entry into the CCP: early entry allows an individual to go through an extended process of screening and training,

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which provides the time and opportunity for evaluation of desired attributes, such as loyalty and ability. Since early membership promotes the Party’s sponsorship of education, they claim that educational attainment is a result of career advancement, rather than a cause. In short, the earlier that someone attains Party membership, the better are that person’s chances of benefiting from Party-sponsored educational opportunities and entry into the administrative elite. Yet the career patterns of top technocrats only partially support such viewpoint, as some of them joined the CCP at the early stage of their college study, while others only became CCP members after they gained certain expertise or degree in science and technology. Yin Li, Chen Jilin and Li Ganjie joined the Party when they were undergraduate students, but Liu Guozhong only became a Party member four years after he graduated from the Nanjing Institute of Technology. Yuan Jiajun joined the Party at the age of 30, when he had worked as an engineer in the Ministry of Aerospace Industry for more than five years. Ma Xingrui became a Party member at the age of 29, when he received a doctoral degree in mechanics at the Harbin Institute of Technology. Therefore, professional qualification rather than early Party membership is the crucial criteria for those technocrats to be handpicked by the Party. Their later career advancement, similar to that of other bureaucrats, is still closely related to age, as the Party has introduced rules that stipulate the desired age of cadres at various steps of the career ladder in the appointment system. To make it to a position at leading-cadre level in China today requires at least a bachelor’s degree. Many leading officials have a master’s degree or the equivalent, and some even have a PhD. Almost all technocrats meet this criteria and some have postgraduate or overseas study experience. In Xi’s time, more technocrats with foreign study experiences in science and technology have been promoted to crucial positions. Typical cases include Chen Jining, who spent ten years in Britain studying environmental engineering at Brunel University and Imperial College London, and Yin Li, who got his doctoral degree of Medical Science from the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, and visited the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health in the United States between 2002 and 2003. Some have tech-related working experiences in Chinese organisations in foreign countries. Zhang Guoqing worked for Norinco in the Middle East for a number of years, while Li Ganjie once worked as First Secretary in the Science and Technology Division of the Chinese Embassy in France. Despite the S&T-related study or working experiences, many technocrats still choose to pursue social science studies at the Party schools or other universities as either a full-time or part-time student for midcareer training. With a bachelor degree in chemical engineering from the Tsinghua University, Xi himself later on studied Marxist theory and ideological education on a part-time basis in Tsinghua University, graduating with a doctorate in law and ideology in 2002. Li Qiang, a bachelor degree holder in agricultural mechanization, attended the Central Party School for on-the-job graduate studies in world economics from 2001 to 2004. He also received an Executive Master of Business Administration (EMBA) from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The Central Party School is responsible for training provincial-/ministerial-level officials as well as Party secretaries in

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municipalities and counties, while provincial Party schools are tasked with training county-level officials who are on track for promotion to municipal-/bureau-level positions (People’s Daily 2008, p. 7). Most technocrats have training experiences at either central or local party schools. Midcareer training in the Central Party School is important for the Party’s efforts to inculcate the senior level cadres with the Party’s values, rules, and norms (Wibowo and Lye 2006; Shambaugh 2008).

4.3 Technocrats in Future Power Reshuffling Age is still an important criterion to decide the political future of CCP officials. The Party has introduced rules that stipulate the desired age of cadres at various steps of the career ladder in the appointment system. No matter how qualified in terms of educational qualifications and professional competence or how well-connected cadres are, they have to carefully consider how to move up the career ladder without being caught in the so-called age dilemma. If cadres follow the beaten track in their career, serving five years in each promotion, they will not be able to make it to the top before they reach the upper age limit for further promotion. Therefore, it is important to ascend more rapidly by getting into the fast lane of cadre promotion. Kou and Tsai (2014) describe three ways to circumvent the age dilemma: the CCYL route, temporary transferred duty, and nonregulation promotion. Gao (2013) discusses the age dilemma at the local level, arguing that county-level cadres have few prospects for being promoted to the municipal level and above. Age restrictions are the main barrier. Another obstacle is the limited availability of leading positions. Thus ambitious low and mid-level cadres encounter a double barrier in the form of age restrictions and term limits. Most of them never manage to overcome these barriers. They get stuck in their career and experience only lateral movement. Kostka and Yu (2015) agree that age restrictions, the limited number of positions at the municipal/bureau level, and the lack of networks linked to higher-level leaders reduce promotional prospects, but, unlike Gao, they also point to low levels of education as an important factor hindering low-level officials’ career advancement. Therefore, access to the fast lanes of cadre promotion is indispensable for any with ambition to become senior officials. In reality, the rise of technocracy provides a new fast track to circumvent age dilemma at the cost of CCYL route in Xi’s politics. For decades, one-time leadership in the CCYL, the youth wing of the CCP, was a fast lane to the top. Since 1982, the CCYL has produced six PSC members, two of whom—Mr Hu Yaobang and Mr Hu Jintao, who are not related—once served as CCP general secretary. The proliferation of leaders with a CCYL background gave birth to the CCYL clique (tuanpai), comprising relatively young, highly educated (mostly in social sciences and humanity) and reform-minded party and government officials. But the political winds shifted in 2016 when Xi clipped the wings of the faction by slashing the CCYL‘s annual budget by half, and state media blasted it for being “too elitist and inefficient” (The Straits Times 2022). Six years later, Vice Premier Hu Chunhua, a

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two-time Politburo member and the last great white hope of the CCYL faction to make it to the PSC, was ousted from the Politburo at the 20th Party Congress. At the top level, Ding Xuexiang, a degree holder in machinery manufacture engineering, is the youngest PSC member who has the potential to replace Li Qiang as Chinese premier in the future. The informal age criterion of 68 for leaving the Politburo was not strictly observed at the 20th Party Congress, with three exception cases of Xi himself, 69, CMC Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia, 72 and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, 69. However, this does not mean that age restrictions are no longer relevant in future power reshuffling. After he came to power, Xi has led two rounds of power reshuffling at the 19th and 20th Party Congress, with only three cases breaking the informal age limit of 68. All these cases were crucial for Xi’s power consolidation and policy continuation. Like Xi, Zhang Youxia is a native of Shaanxi province, and their fathers were known to be close friends. A veteran of the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, Zhang’s CMC vice chairmanship plays a pivotal role in safeguarding Xi’s control of the PLA. The promotion of the long-time foreign-policy hand Wang Yi indicated the CCP’s plan to continue with Xi’s more muscular foreign policy. Still the NPC had to revise the PRC Constitution and abolish the term limits for the Chinese president and vice president in 2018 to pave way for Xi’s third term of leadership. For all other positions, including the premiership, term limits still apply (Brødsgaard and Grünberg 2018). If the informal retirement age criterion of 68 is basically observed at the 21st Party Congress scheduled in 2027, with Xi continuing to be an exception, Xi and Ding Xuexiang will stay on while all the other five members will leave the PSC. As executive vice premier, Ding is well positioned to take over Premier Li Qiang‘s job and become the no. 2 powerful person in the CCP. As compared to Xi and Li who had their higher degrees on part-time basis in social sciences, Ding had more consistent natural sciences and engineering experiences as he acquired a master’s degree in science and worked as a researcher at the Shanghai Research Institute of Materials (SRIM) for 17 years. The leading positions of two youngest PSC members (Li Qiang and Ding Xuexiang) in the State Council, China’s cabinet, represent the political ascendancy of technocrats in Xi’s time. At the next Party Congress, four or five Politburo members born in the 1960s are expected to rise to the apex PSC, most of whom, if not all, will probably be technocrats with S&T backgrounds. Frontrunners include incumbent Shanghai Party Secretary Chen Jining (born in 1964), Beijing Party Secretary Yin Li (born in 1962), Chongqing Party Secretary Yuan Jiajun (born in 1962), Director of CCP Central Organization Department Li Ganjie (born in 1964), Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing (born in 1964), Vice Premier Liu Guozhong (born in 1962), Secretary of the CCP Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission Chen Wenqing (born in 1960) and Director of the CCP Central Propaganda Department Li Shulei (born in 1964). Of the eight rising stars, only Chen Wenqing and Li Shulei have humanity and social science backgrounds, while the other six are pure-blooded technocrats with S&T training.

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Chinese provincial leaders who are important political players that constitute the largest bloc in the CCP Central Committee form a major link through which the central leadership implements its political and socioeconomic policies. These officials are heavyweights in Chinese politics, with the primary responsibility of overseeing local economies that can dwarf those of other countries. The study of the provincial leadership may shed some light on the future restructuring of the CCP politburo and other leading apparatus. Chinese provincial leaders these days have diversified backgrounds including working experiences in coastal areas like Zhejiang, Shanghai and Fujian, military and aerospace industry, technology and engineering sectors, public health as well as CCYL. Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, two officials with public health background, namely Yin Li and Shen Xiaoming, have been promoted to become party secretary of Beijing and Hainan provinces respectively. Since Xi came to power in 2012, no Politburo members heading the CCP Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission or the Central Propaganda Department have ever risen to the top PSC level. If this rule still holds, the PSC will likely be filled up with cadres of science and engineering training at the 21st Party Congress in 2027. Shanghai Party Secretary Chen Jining is particularly prominent since almost all his predecessors (Jiang Zemin, Zhu Rongji, Wu Bangguo, Huang Ju, Chen Liangyu, Xi Jinping, Yu Zhengsheng, Hanzheng, Li Qiang) since 1989 had made their way into the Standing Committee except for disgraced Chen Liangyu, who was sentenced to 18 years in prison on corruption charges in 2008. Beijing Party Secretary Yin Li and Chongqing Party Secretary Yuan Jiajun also have an upper hand over their peers due to their positions in strategically important regions. Chinese provincial/municipal leaders who constitute the largest bloc in the CCP Central Committee form a major link through which the central leadership implements its political and socioeconomic policies. These officials are heavyweights in Chinese politics, with primary responsibility for local economies that can dwarf those of countries. The party secretaries of Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing, Guangdong province and Xinjiang Autonomous Region are already Politburo members, and thus have high chances of becoming PSC members. Governors/mayors in these regions are also well-positioned to be promoted to the Politburo or other state leadership than their peers in other provinces. These days some of these local officials are well known for their engineering backgrounds, who include Guangdong Governor Wang Weizhong and Chongqing Mayor Hu Henghua. Trained as a hydraulic engineer at Tsinghua University, Wang worked at the ministry overseeing water resources for many years, before he was transferred to the National Science Commission, the predecessor of the Ministry of Science and Technology, to work on environment issues. Hu, after receiving his science degree in industrial automation from the Xi‘an University of Architecture and Technology, worked as an engineer and manager at the Hengyang Steel Pipe Factory in Hunan province for more than 20 years. Although cabinet ministers normally have lesser chances of promotion to the Politburo or other state leader positions as compared to their provincial peers, those who have close connections to the top leadership or work experience as provincial

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party secretaries still stand a chance to join the top echelon. Incumbent Politburo members like He Lifeng (former deputy minister in charge of the National Development and Reform Commission) and Wang Yi (former foreign minister) were cases in point for the power reshuffling at the 20th Party Congress in 2022. Huai Jinpeng, a software expert born in 1962, became minister of education in August 2021. A typical technocrat, Huai once served as president of Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (Beihang University), one of the Seven Sons of National Defence, and vice-minister of Industry and Information Technology. His appointment indicates China’s intention to reform its education system to attain the science and technology self-reliance goal in both the military and civilian realms. Ministerial-level officials working in the CCP Central Committee agencies like the Central Organisation Department, Central Propaganda Department, International Liaison Department, Central Policy Research Office, United Front Work Department, General Office or even the Central Party School are also prospective candidates for national leadership positions. Li Shulei, former executive vice president of the Central Party School, was promoted to be a Politburo member at the 20th Party Congress. Li has his unique political capital as he was named vice president of the Central Party School in 2008, working directly under then-Central Party School President Xi Jinping. In January 2017, Li was appointed deputy secretary of the powerful Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the CCP’s anti-corruption organ. Nevertheless, the CCP’s functional departments are usually led by officials with political work experiences rather than technological backgrounds. A technocrat also joined China’s military leadership at the 20th Party Congress. Li Shangfu, an aerospace engineer, became a member of the Central Military Commission (CMC), the highest-level authority over China’s armed forces, and the country’s defense minister. A son of a Red Army veteran that once led the PLA Railway Force, Li entered the National University of Defense Technology in 1978, and after graduation, he began working at the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre as a technician. In December 2003, he was promoted to commander of the centre, and with this capacity, he oversaw several rocket launches, including the launch of the Chang’e 2 lunar probe in October 2010. In 2016, he became deputy commander of the newly established PLA Strategic Support Force—which integrates space, cyber, and psychological warfare capabilities—and in 2017 became director of the CMC’s Equipment Development Department. In September 2018, Li, along with the Equipment Development Department, was sanctioned by the US government for “engaging in significant transactions with persons” under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, namely for transactions that involved “Russia‘s transfer to China of Su-35 combat aircraft and S-400 surface-to-air missile system-related equipment” (CNN 2022). This meant General Li was banned from holding a US visa, which made him unable to travel to the US for an exchange or dialogue. Since Li is in charge of the military talks with the United States, this promotion has posed awkward challenges for the improvement of China-US military relations.

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Xi’s leadership will continue to promote many technocrats at the ministerial/ provincial level from the military-related aerospace industries, electronic and environmental engineering, medical or other strategic new industries. There is a move to integrate military and civilian industries, and the emphasis on technocracy is indicative of China’s ambition to seek tech supremacy. The 14th Five-Year Plan (2021– 2025) and the development vision for 2035 reflected China’s aim to consolidate its supply chains amid a push by some countries towards decoupling, and to significantly increase China’s spending on research and development (R&D) to achieve self-reliance in key high-tech sectors. The roster of officials with backgrounds in science and technology on the party’s 205-member Central Committee has rebounded to roughly the length it had during former leader Jiang Zemin‘s first five-year term, beginning in 1992, when he kicked off a rapid acceleration of scientific research and innovation. That compares with less than 18% in the previous Central Committee. The increase comes as Washington takes steps both to contain China’s tech sector and boost U.S. innovation. Bo (2007) once conducted a technocratic evaluation of the 16th CCP Central Committee (2002–2007), arguing that in Hu Jintao‘s time, not only the percentage of technocrats in the Central Committee had decreased significantly, their technocratic training had often become irrelevant as their specialist career experience was very brief. Bo (2007, p. 108) noticed that although some of them also had academic training in a natural science or engineering as well as work experience as engineers in the early years of their career, China’s new political elites in the early twenty-first century chose to enhance their academic knowledge in social sciences and economic management. This viewpoint may have reflected the political reality in Hu’s era, but such momentum of “emphasising social sciences over natural sciences” (zhong wen qing li) definitely has been reversed in Xi’s second and third term. “We must regard science and technology as our primary productive force, talent as our primary resource, and innovation as our primary driver of growth,” Xi told his colleagues at the 20th Party Congress (The Wall Street Journal 2022). Since 1949, the ruling CCP has wrestled with the value of recruiting elites with technical knowledge as opposed to purely political cadres—the “red vs. expert” debate, as it’s known. Drawing ideological comparisons with Mao, who asked cadres to have a pro-Communist or “red” mindset along with professional skills (you hong you zhuan) in 1957, Xi wants to stack the Chinese government with loyal S&T experts amid the rivalry with the United States.

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Nathan, Andrew. 2003. China’s Resilient Authoritarianism. Journal of Democracy 14 (1): 6–17. People’s Daily. 2008. Zhongguo gongchandang dangxiao gongzuo zanxing tiaoli 中国共产党党校 工作条例 [Rules of CCP Party School Work]. October 30. Available at http://cpc.people.com. cn/GB/64162/71380/182420/12300996.html. Accessed 6 Nov 2022. Pieke, Frank. 2009. The Good Communist: Elite Training and State Building in Today’s China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shambaugh, David. 2008. China’s Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation. Berkeley: University of California Press. Shambaugh, David. 2012. International perspectives on the Communist party of China. China: An International Journal 10 (2): 8–22. Shih, Victor, Christopher Adolph, and Mingxing Liu. 2012. Getting ahead in the Communist party: Explaining the advancement of central committee members in China. American Political Science Review 106 (1): 166–187. The Straits Times. 2022. China’s Youth League faction down but not out, 3 May 2022. https://www. straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/chinas-youth-league-faction-down-but-not-out. Accessed 26 Jan 2023. The Wall Street Journal. 2022. China’s Xi Stacks Government with Science and Tech Experts amid Rivalry with U.S. 18 November 2022. https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-xi-stacks-gov ernment-with-science-and-tech-experts-amid-rivalry-with-u-s-11668772682. Accessed 27 Jan 2023. Tsou, Tang. 2002. Chinese Politics at the Top: Factionalism or Informal Politics? Balance-of-Power Politics or a Game to Win All. In The Nature of Chinese Politics: From Mao to Jiang, ed. Jonathan Unger, 98–159. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Wang, Alex. 2015. Chinese State Capitalism and the Environment. In Regulating the Visible Hand? The Institutional Implications of Chinese State Capitalism, ed. Benjamin L. Liebman and Curtis J. Milhaupt, 85–108. New York: Oxford University Press. Wang, Zhengxu, and Ern Ser Tan. 2013. The Conundrum of Authoritarian Resiliency: Hybrid and Nondemocratic Regimes in East Asia. Taiwan Journal of Democracy 9 (1): 199–219. Wibowo, Ignatius, and Liang Fok, Lye. 2006. China’s central party school: A unique institution adapting to change. In The Chinese Communist Party in Reform, 139–56. ed. Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard and Zheng Yongnian. London: Routledge. Yao, Yang. 2017. An anatomy of the Chinese Selectocracy. CCER Working Paper. http://en.nsd. edu.cn/print.asp?articleid=7624/. Accessed 21 Jan 2022.

Chapter 5

Domestic and International Implications

This chapter emphasizes the economic and technological implications of the rise of technocratic politics in China, and the related political culture that is adapted to the increasingly tense international relations. In detail, its impact upon China’s domestic governance, military–industrial complex, foreign policy, and international relations is reviewed. Since its establishment in 1949, the PRC has been wrestling with the “expert versus red” debate of recruiting tech elites as opposed to purely political operators. Under Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, some top leaders had engineering backgrounds, but their specialist career experience was thin and they chose to enhance their academic knowledge in social sciences in the later stage of their career. In Xi’s time, the CCP deliberately promoted a large number of technocrats with hard science knowledge to important positions due to his belief in the importance of science and technology to bolster China’s economic and military might. The rise of technocratic politics in China will have profound impact upon the CCP political culture that is increasingly adapted to the global geopolitical tension, its emerging military–industrial complex, foreign policy, and the structure of international relations in the long run.

5.1 Domestic Political Implications Xi’s suppression of the CCYL clique led by Hu, including the early exit of Li Keqiang, Wang Yang and Hu Chunhua, political heavyweights from the CCYL camp, indicated the Party’s new personnel ideology of emphasising S&T expertise over political networking and social management. As compared to Youth League officials, most of whom are trained in social sciences and humanities and good at building up political connections, S&T cadres are strong in organizing research projects but weak in playing factional politics.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 G. Chen, Political Implications of China’s Technocracy in the Reform Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-2977-1_5

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As discussed in Chap. 4, Xi has brought China’s factional politics from the models of power balancing and bandwagoning back to winner-takes-all model that once prevailed in Mao’s time. On the one hand, the rise of technocrats and the waning of the CCYL faction resulted from this transformation of political models at the top level; on the other hand, such technocratic trend will further consolidate the regime’s authoritarian feature that was lessened by fragmented factional politics in Hu Jintao‘s time. Since S&T cadres spend most of their time doing R&D before transferred to political positions in provinces, they lack the political networking capabilities possessed by CCYL cadres and thus are less likely involved in factional politics that may undermine the incumbent leader’s authority. Being more obedient and less liberalminded, technocrats focus on the technical solutions to governance issues rather than looking at policy alternatives of reforming existing institutions. In the Xi-incommand mode, the growing number of technocrats at the top prefers to take the bandwagoning approach that helps explain the otherwise odd readiness of the political elite, to take their political cues from Xi even when his behaviour was judged unprincipled or his policy preference misguided. The power-balancing model in Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao‘s time, when all of the PSC members were vested with almost equal political authority, resulted in more power-sharing and high-level checks and balances. In the model of collective leadership, Party cadres demonstrated their allegiance to the leaders of their factions at the top, which facilitated fragmented policy enforcement and abundant policy debates. Once in power, Xi openly expressed his discontent about such fragmented authoritarianism, criticising some senior cadres for forming “factions and cliques” (tuantuanhuohuo) within the Party (People’s Daily 2015). He blamed the interest groups aligned with powerful PSC members for the CCP’s runaway corruption, naming the petroleum clique associated with Zhou Yongkang, the disgraceful security czar promoted by Jiang Zemin, and the Shanxi (province) faction linked to scandalous Ling Jihua, Hu Jintao‘s top aide, as typical examples of tuantuanhuohuo. Xi’s total victory and the rise of technocracy in the 20th Party Congress have suppressed factional politics to some extent, but the temporarily prevailing “winnertakes-all” mode cannot uproot intra-Party cliques aligned with powerful individuals at the top, or eradicate corruption within the Party. Since the Tiananmen crackdown of 1989, it is generally believed that corruption has worsened in China (Ash 2013; Quah 2013; Chen 2009; Yang 2004). Earlier records revealed that mostly low and mid-level corruptive officials had been exposed and punished, but these days high-level and high-stakes cases (da’an yao’an) are on the rise. Some have deemed China’s corruption as being systematized and embedded in the system of state capitalism (Root 1996; The Economist 2002; Fenby 2012: pp. 7–8). According to the global Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), compiled by Transparency International (2022), China ranked 66 in terms of cleanness among 180

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countries in 2021: the same as Romania and Vanuatu. Xi’s clean-up effort and crackdown on political factions has failed to raise China’s CPI ranking substantially, indicating the public’s increasing concern over the fairness and transparency of the anticorruption campaign itself in an opaque authoritarian system that lacks democratic elections, an independent judiciary system or sufficient media supervision. Maintaining Party discipline and improving cadre management are vital issues for a Leninist party to stay in power. Due to lack of political pressure from opposition parties or institutionalized supervision from civic organizations, the ruling CCP has to check graft activities among its cadres through repetitive ‘party building‘ processes and intra-Party supervisory mechanisms. Under China’s one-party political system, it is the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) and its local branches rather than the procuratorate or the police that start the investigations and detain suspects who are Party members. The CCDI has also frequently intervened in judicial work by initiating and leading anti-corruption investigations. By doing so, the independence of the judiciary is severely undermined. The involvement of the CCDI in anti-corruption often helps some Party members, particularly high-ranking officials, escape from criminal justice. This practice is therefore ‘entirely arbitrary,’ and has shown that it is ‘improbable that China will move towards a depoliticized legal system as long as the Party treats its own members without reference to any legal process’ (Becker 2000: p. 340). It should also be noted that the CCDI and the State Supervision Commission share a joint office: i.e. two different official names, but one working team. Therefore, there is no real boundary between the Party and the government in the anti-corruption realm. The promotion of relatively clean technocrats in S&T realms is related to the CCP’s anti-corruption effort to improve its image and regain public support. At a mid2015 national conference of cadres working in mass organizations such as the CCYL, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions and the All-China Women’s Association, Xi warned that the CCYL ran the risk of “being marginalized by young people and being marginalized by the party-state apparatus”. The CCYL was also lambasted for being too “bureaucratic, procedurally minded, aristocratic and entertainmentoriented” ( jiguanhua, xingzhenghua, guizuhua, yulehua) (Lam 2016). The CCDI inspection teams were stationed at the CCYL to find corruption and infractions of party disciplines. Nevertheless, uprooting corruption is mission impossible in the current political, economic and social context, and Chinese leaders fully understand the limits of anticorruption actions. High-profile corruption cases like Zhou Yongkang‘s and Ling Jihua‘s may be interpreted as the outgrowth of power struggles within the CCP, with competing factions using the ‘war on corruption’ as a tool to eliminate or weaken rivals and their corporate supporters. Xi has tapered the scale of anti-corruption movement once he consolidated his power and established full authority. With the expansion of the military–industrial complex under the patronage of powerful technocrats, new corruption and nepotism are expected to flourish in those secretive independent kingdoms that often evade supervision from the judiciary and even the Party’s disciplinary departments. Research in some developing countries

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has indicated that domestic reform efforts to improve governance through a largely technocratic approach often fail to deliver any real results (OECD 2012). In the long run, to win in a full-scale war on corruption, China has to gradually institutionalize an independent judiciary system with an enhanced supervisory role for the media and public. Catching the ‘tigers’ alone is not enough to make the regime more accountable, transparent and responsive. Selective enforcement in a politicized process would only lead to more corruption and undermine the effectiveness of anti-corruption campaigns. In reality amid what Xi called “changes unseen in 100 years,” the CCP’s power succession and elite politics are facing more uncertainties after the 20th Party Congress. The wipe-out of old factions linked to Xi’s predecessors has opened up new factions under Xi’s leadership, which will compete for control and influence— and ultimately who succeeds Xi at the very top of the Party. The rise of different factions driving elite politics under Xi is inevitable since the 100-million-member CCP can never be monolithic or, as Xi himself has stated, “united as a piece of hard steel” (Wu 2022). Technocrats are neither corruption-proof nor free from factional politics. As the former factions seem to have disappeared, new factions under Xi’s supreme umbrella of power are beginning to emerge. Among Xi’s protégés, province-based factions linked to Fujian, Zhejiang, Shaanxi and Shanghai, the gang of Tsinghua University, his alma mater, as well as the emerging military-industrial group represented by technocrats like Ma Xingrui, Yuan Jiajun, Zhang Guoqing, and Li Ganjie, can be identified. As the paramount leader, Xi likes to see his followers to be divided up into competing groups, which would underline, rather than undermine, his supreme status, power, and authority (Wu 2022). No heir apparent to Xi has been anointed, and that could set the stage for future uncertainties—and potential tensions in the Party. Such a succession void may increase uncertainties for a future power transition—an issue central to the power play that guides Chinese elite politics. Proximity to Xi does not necessarily hold more explanatory power for personnel shifts in future elite politics than technocratic backgrounds, age or performances. In the new political context of rising technocracy, Xi may appoint an official with S&T background as his successor in the future, but factional competition for that position will intensify before the final decision is made. The issue of successions has affected the country’s political stability since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. In particular, power succession in the 1980s did not go smoothly, as evidenced by the ousting of Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, leaders who were seen by the party orthodoxy as being too politically liberal in the face of a rising tide of student protests. Since then, the party leadership has made enormous efforts to institutionalise elite politics. Many formal institutions have been established, but informal rules continue to play a role in handling power succession. By breaking with those rules, Xi now must use his personal authority to eventually set up a “new normal” for the selection of his successor. That won’t necessarily be a smooth process and might be challenged by intense intra-party competition.

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5.2 Economic Implications and the Rise of Military–Industrial Complex Most of the technocrats in the 20th CCP Central Committee come from emerging industries that the Party has identified as strategic priorities, including military and aerospace industry, semiconductors, environmental science and biotechnology. Aerospace experts lead with 20 seats (The Wall Street Journal 2022), forming the “aerospace clique” and highlighting the importance Beijing places on the industry’s role in the CCP’s civil-military fusion strategy. Given the success of China’s military and aerospace industry, such highly educated technocrats are believed to have capabilities in managing gigantic and complex projects symbolizing national pride. On 22 January 2017, Xi Jinping kick-started a new commission to oversee the integration of military and civilian development ( junmin ronghe fazhan weiyuanhui) as part of the country’s ambitious military reform programme. The commission decides, deliberates and coordinates major issues on integrating military and civilian industries. As China’s paramount leader, Xi heads many top decision-making panels in various policy areas, including the State Security Council, central leading groups on comprehensively deepening reforms, military reform, foreign affairs and national security, cyber security and information, Taiwan affairs, and economy and finance. Some of these inter-agency mechanisms were established after Xi became the Party’s general secretary in 2012. As CMC chairman, the country’s supreme military policy-making body, Xi has launched an unprecedented restructuring of China’s military apparatus since 2015. With the newly established commission, Xi aims to reform China’s military-industrial complex (MIC), much like what the United States has done to ensure that the modernised armed forces commensurate with their rising status in the international arena. The MIC was a term used by outgoing US President Dwight Eisenhower in 1961 to refer to a close relationship between the government and the defence industry. Today the MIC is often used in reference to an informal alliance between a nation’s military apparatus and the arms industry as a vested interest that influences national defence and foreign policy. The reform has given licences to more civilian enterprises (both state-owned and private) for producing weapons and military-related services and equipment, while allowing state-owned military industrial enterprises ( jungong qiye) to produce more commodities and services for civilian use. The reform was also part of Xi’s ambition to restructure state-owned enterprises (SOEs); the country converted many military industrial enterprises into SOEs manufacturing civilian products in the reform era. Some pilot cases relating to the militarycivilian joint development preceded the establishment of the commission. On 11 September 2016, the Sany Heavy Industry group based in southern Hunan province signed the Jointly Developing “Unmanned Equipment” Strategic Cooperation Agreement with the Chinese PLA National Defence University of Science and Technology. According to the agreement, the two sides would jointly research and develop unattended operation equipment, set up an “unattended equipment engineering centre” and jointly develop high intelligent equipment technological product for the military.

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The PLA’s institutional syncretism goes through three evolutionary stages that match the primary goals of the CCP: revolution, Maoist state-building and post-Mao economic development. In each case the nature of PLA syncretism changes, from revolutionary vanguard, to component of state-building and to “PLA, Inc.” (Forbes 1997) The PLA, as well as its predecessors, the Red Army and the Eighth Routh Army, has historically engaged in economic production. Following the “Doctrine of Self-Reliance”, Mao Zedong encouraged his Red Army to grow grain and vegetables to supplement their supplies during the 1927–1934 civil war period. On 7 May 1966, Mao wrote to then defence minister, Marshal Lin Biao and said, “The PLA should be a great school…..In this great school, (the troops) can learn politics, learn military skills, acquire education, as well as engage in agricultural and sideline production. At the same time they should be also able to run certain small and medium-sized factories making products that meet their own needs and for exchange with the state for other goods of the same value.” (Singh 1999). In the reform era, Deng Xiaoping‘s leadership proposed that the building of the military forces must serve China’s overall development, and expressed support for army-run enterprises to solve the difficulties of financial tensions and lack of military expenditures, with the requirements of self-improvement, self-development and selfrestraint. The military forces’ business interests started to grow in the mid-1970s during Mao’s later years, and were further consolidated after Deng came to power in the late 1970s. When Deng started economic reforms in the late 1970s, the PLA, with its own farms and other industrial activities, had already played an essential part of China’s economy. Its giant defence production industrial complex attracted the nation’s best human and technical resources. Since 1985 when the PLA was allowed to enter the civil commercial field, the operational strength of military organisations at all levels has expanded exponentially. The PLA was able to take advantage of its cheap labour pool, tax advantages and unused infrastructure to make quick gains (Galvan & Sil, 2016). Starting from a relatively low level, the PLA’s system of farms and factories were a multi-billion dollar economic empire by the mid-1990s. In 1991 and 1993, the central government rectified the military enterprises and prohibited MAC (Military Area Commands)below level combat forces from business operations. These two rectifications neither produced significant effect nor curb the momentum of corruption. In the Asian financial crisis in 1998, the increasingly rampant smuggling activities led to huge fiscal losses and worsened domestic deflation. On 22 July 1998, then Central Military Commission (CMC) Chairman Jiang Zemin called for a crackdown on military’s commercial activities; however, the anti-graft action, according to most estimates available, had affected no more than one-third of the PLA’s enterprises. One reason was that this directive did not cover the PLA’s defence-related industrial activities. Thus, most of the industries converted to civilian production were being reconverted for defense production activities, and in this way they successfully got away from the policy restriction.

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Loopholes remained, allowing the army to continue with some business activities seen as beneficial for training officers. The PLA was said to have only dumped loss-making enterprises, while keeping the major profit-making enterprises. During his military reform, Xi decided to stop the military’s commercial activities. In March 2016, the CMC issued a “Notice on the cessation of paid service activities by the PLA and Armed Police” (henceforth Notice), detailing a step-by-step cessation of all paid service activities by the PLA and the PAP. The “Notice” took immediate effect. All units were not allowed to start new projects or new contracts of paid service activities. All expired paid service contracts could not be renewed and all military-civil agreement which could be terminated through negotiation would be terminated immediately. The social security task originally assumed by the armed force was integrated into the civil-military development system. The military reform came amidst Xi’s crackdown on corruption in the PLA and People’s Armed Police (PAP), especially their logistics and armaments systems dealing with official funds, properties, procurement and development of weapons and military technology. A large number of PLA and PAP generals in these divisions were placed under investigation for corruption charges since 2012. The list included Gu Junshan and Liu Zheng, former deputy directors of PLA General Logistics Department (GLD), Fu Linguo, former deputy chief of staff of the GLD headquarters and Zhou Guotai, former deputy director of the GLD quartermaster production plant. More than 90% of corruption cases in the military were reported to involve personnel and finance management, construction, oil management, material and armament procurement, health care, real estate and reception services. Before the reform, finances, construction, medical services, fuels and management of PLA public housing were under the purview of the GLD, while arms procurement was in the charge of the PLA General Armaments Department (GAD). The two departments once held vast financial resources and assets that were free from civilian supervision and auditing; with time, they had evolved to become independent economic kingdoms where crimes such as embezzlement, bribery, abuse of power and unauthorised trading and use of military real estate became rampant. The task seems especially formidable because of repeated reports regarding the alleged involvement of various high-ranking leaders. Xi and his team needed the anticorruption campaign in the PLA to break the deadlock and consolidate control. The military’s engagement in the commercial activities however did play an important role in making up for the lack of funds for maintaining troops’ expenses, relocation of cadres and their family members. It was only with the deepening of reform and economic development that shortcomings were gradually revealed. The rampant military corruption presented to the public has caused huge scepticism about the capacity of the army. Xi’s anti-corruption campaign has hurt the vested interest in China’s MIC, so he had to promote a large number of capable technocrats from the military industries to appease the MIC and to incentivise high-quality indigenous R&D in the MIC. Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing and Defense Minister Li Shangfu are cases in point demonstrating the MIC’s increasing policy influences in the State Council after the

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reform reaffirmed its political loyalty to Xi and economic competitiveness in the national development. Till now, there has been no publicly disclosed figure on the actual number of military enterprises. There could be more than 15,000 enterprises with military ties, which were likely to have annual sales of about 2% of the GDP. About 95% of the military enterprises were small and medium-sized enterprises, with the remaining 5% constituting more than 75% of total military sales (Chen and Yu 2017). This part of the income greatly subsidised the military expenditure shortage. The Chinese military-business complex has greater diversity of economic activity and is involved in far more sectors and industries than previous Western and Chinese militaries, and possessed more complex and differentiated economic organisations. In the past, military economic activity was primarily oriented to agricultural and ordnance production. While the PLA maintained strong interest in large-scale farming and weapons manufacturing, it also became heavily involved in non-military activities, ranging from telecommunications to real estate development. The greater diversification of the Chinese military-business complex might be partly attributable to the generally greater differentiation of economic activity in the industrial and postindustrial age. The growing number of technocrats from the MIC reflects China’s transition from Mao’s military institution ruled by warriors to the industrial and post-industrial society ruled by engineers, researchers and producers in the reform era. The PLA alone has at least 70 automobile factories (accounting for 20% of the whole automobile industry in China), nearly 400 pharmaceutical factories and 1500 hotels (Chen and Yu 2017). Four of the 10 largest clothing manufacturers were once controlled and owned by the military. The PLA is also often involved in the highly profitable and specialised franchise areas like telecommunication industries (including paging, mobile phones), finance, foreign trade and so on. The military enterprises subsequently developed into three levels in Jiang Zemin‘s time. The first was the state-level military enterprises, comprising the San Jiu Group, Xin Xing Group (General Logistics Department), Poly Goup (headquarters of the General Staff), Kaili Group (General Political Department), Xin Shidai Company (Commission on Science Technology and Industry for National Defence) and Great Wall Industry Corp (China Aerospace Corporation) (Table 5.1). Most of these militaryrelated enterprises now have developed into conglomerates, with large capital and personnel and engaged in shipping, tourism, real estate, trade and so on as one integrated group. The second level military enterprises were opened by the main military region commands, and engaged chiefly in the production and trading of some agricultural sideline products. Normally, their scale was relatively smaller. These enterprises were incepted initially to fill the fiscal shortages; however with time, they grew to become commercial companies. The third-level military enterprises were relatively small and weak, and mainly military factories or specialised factories established long ago to produce aircraft, tanks, artilleries and military uniforms. In the new economic situation, most of these enterprises have been converted to serve the civil usage market ( jun zhuan min)

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Table 5.1 Companies with Direct or Indirect Ties with the PLA and PAP (Wortzel 2000) PAP

China Jingan Equipment Import–export Corp China Anhua Development Corp Wankun Development Ltd

CMC Political Work Department

Kaili Corp Tiancheng Corp

CMC Joint Staff Department

Bereau of Military Equipment and Technology Cooperation Huitong Corp China Poly-tech China Poly Group, a.k.a. Poly Technologies Huitong Corp China Electronic Systems Engineering Company Pinghe Electronics Company China Zhihua Corporation

PLA Rocket Force

Shanhaidan Enterprises Group Corp

PLA Navy

Xinhai Corp Songhai Corp

PLA Air Force

Lantian Corp.,a.k.a. China Bluesky Industry Corp Tianma (Sky Horse) Enterprises China United Airlines China Anda Aviation

PLA Military Regions

Beijing-Huabei Jinghai Enterprise Corp Shenyang-Dongbei Jincheng Industrial Corp Jinan-Shandong Dongyue Industrial Corp Nanjing-Huandong Enterprises Corp Guangzhou-Nanfang Industrial and Trading Corp Chengdu-Southwest Great Wall Economic Development General Corp Lanzhou-Northwest Industrial and Trading Corp

PLA Joint Logistics Support Force

Xinxing Corp China Xinxing Import and Export Corp San Jiu Northeast Jincheng Enterprises Group Duan Guangshan China Tianlong Enterprises Corp Southern Industry and Trade General Corp

CMC Equipment Development Department

Beijing Command Centre Base-Northwest Nuclear Test Base Base-Shanghai Maritime Space Measurement Ship Base Base-Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre Base-Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre Base-Xian Satellite Launch Centre Base-Xichang Satellite Launch Centre Base-China Aerodynamics R&D Base-Baicheng Weapons Test Centre (continued)

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Table 5.1 (continued) Xinshidai New Era Development Corporation China Yuanwang Corporation China Association of Peaceful Use of Military Industrial Technology China Xiaofeng Technology and Equipment Corporation Ministry of Industry and Information Technology

China National Electronics Import–Export Corp. (CEIEC) China Electronics International Exhibition and Advertising Corp CEIEC Kaiyuan China Electronics Materials Corp CEIEC International Economic Cooperation Company CEIEC Oriental Trading Company CEIEC International Electronics Service Corp

China National Nuclear Corporation

China Nuclear Energy Industry Corp China Zhongyuan Foreign Engineering Corp China Nuclear Instrument and Equipment Corp China Rainbow International Corp China Nuclear Equipment and Materials Corporation China Isotope Corp China Baoyuan Industry and Trade Company

China North Industries Group (parent company)

China North Industries Corporation China General Industrial Material and Equipment Supply Corp China Yanxing National Corp China North Optics and Electronics Corp China North Chemical Industries Corp

China State Shipbuilding Corp(parent company)

China Shipbuilding Trading Company China Offshore Industrial Corp China United Shipbuilding Company

China Aerospace Corp. (parent company)

1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th Academy China Aerospace Machinery and Electronics Corp. China Great Wall Industry Group China Great Wall Industry Corp China National Precision Machinery Import and Export Corp Base-Jiangnan Space Corp Base-Sichuan Aerospace Corp Base-Sanjiang Space Group Base-Shaanxi Liangnan Corp Yunnan Space Group (continued)

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Table 5.1 (continued) Aviation Industries Corp. of China (parent company)

China National Aero-Technology Import–Export Corp. Group China National Aero-Technology Import–Export Corp CATIC Industries Corp CATIC Computer Corp China National Aero-Engine Corp China National Aero-Equipment Corp China Aviation Supplies Corp China Aviation Industry Supply and Marketing Corp China Aeronautical Projects Contracting and Development Corp. China National Aero-Technology International Engineering Corp China National Helicopter Corp China Aviation Industry Civil Products Corp

China State Shipbuilding Corporation

China Shipbuilding Trading Company China Offshore Industrial Corporation China United Shipbuilding Company

China Aerospace Corporation

China Great Wall Industry Group China Great Wall Industry Corporation China National Precision Machinery Import and Export Corporation

that are still more and less under the control of the military. There is an increasing percentage of PLA economic ventures looking abroad for sources of valuable foreign exchange. Nearly all the major military-run conglomerates, such as the China Xinxing Import–Export Corporation and China North Industries Corporation (Norinco), have an import–export arm, specifically tasked to market and sell PLA-produced goods and services overseas. Vice premier Zhang Guoqing, also a Politburo member, once worked as an arms dealer for the Norinco in the Middle East after he graduated from the Changchun Institute of Optical Mechanics. Into the mid-1990s, the drawbacks of military’s engagement in business became increasingly obvious. The PLA had increased the use of its uncontested special privileges that conflicted with the market economy principle of free and fair competition. Much of their venture capital came from the fixed assets in the army, the funds within the military system or bank loans. They also received policy support from the government, for example, preferential corporate tax rate for years. Meanwhile, due to the constraints of ownership relationship and limited management level, some military-owned companies were neither economically efficient nor keen in rent-seeking. They even relied on government funds to make up the loss, which cause huge loss of government resources. The PLA began to use its prerogatives to obtain undue advantage in its commercial competition with civilian

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entrepreneurs (Cheng 1998). Unlike other armed forces which run defence production units or export weapons and other defence equipment, over two-thirds of the PLA’s business was geared towards civilian production and services. This unequal competition reached a scale where it began to threaten the very credibility of China’s economic reform. The increasing incidents of the PLA top-brass using their special privileges to promote their business interests had gradually begun to subvert the military’s priorities. Accordingly, the sheer magnitude of the PLA’s business empire made China’s leaders apprehensive about attempts to control what looked like the irrepressible economic enterprises of their armed forces. These enterprises were virtually immune to China’s struggle to weed out corruption from state structures. Essentially, reform on military enterprises was critical to the restructuring of China’s SOEs. Xi’s military reform aimed to reduce the military’s involvement in commercial activities and create an integrated management system for corruption control. Nevertheless, uprooting corruption in the military is a mission impossible in the current political, economic and social context, as the campaign and military reform have severely hurt vested interests. Xi thus encountered intricate factional resistances. Increasingly influenced by the expanding MIC, Xi himself had to rely on technocrats from the MIC to consolidate his control over China’s economy and military forces. By placing the 15 major departments under the CMC’s direct control in 2016, it has overcome the situation where generals dominate certain sections that were previously too far down the hierarchy for CMC top leaders to supervise. It’s impossible for the CCP to delink the military completely from business activities however. Corrupt cases involving military industries have shown that the tree-like organisational model could become seedbeds of massive corruption and even put civilian leaders’ authority in the CMC at stake. For now, both the anti-corruption campaign and the military reform have substantially curbed the rampant graft activities in the armed forces and military industries. In the long run, to win in a full-scale war on corruption, the leadership has to gradually institutionalise an efficient supervisory system against corrupt military officers. The reorganisation enhanced intra-PLA supervision and inter-sectional checks and balances, but failed to curb the ever-growing MIC in the country. On the contrary, Xi’s promotion of technocrats from the MIC to key position further increased MIC’s influence upon Chinese policy making. Xi’s effort to increase integration between the military and industry shows Beijing‘s determination to shake up the country’s bureaucratic and antiquated weapons production system. The military civilian fusion consolidates the MIC’s position as a key policy influencer and interest group in China’s political economy. Nevertheless, a fragmented defence industry, concerns over indigenous innovation capacities and protection of intellectual property rights, as well as technology sanctions from the United States and other western countries will be key obstacles to China’s nurturing of defence manufacturers that are comparable to Lockheed Martin or Boeing in the United States.

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5.3 Self-Reliance and Inward-Looking Policies The rise of tech elites in China’s economic policymaking has far-reaching implications upon the country’s development strategy. Since many of them were promoted due to their involvement in the country’s strategic R&D projects aimed at indigenous innovation and domestic capacity building, these technocrats, once in power, tend to support inward-looking development policies focused on self-reliance and selfsufficiency. Thanks to their connections with the military–industrial-technological complex, they prefer assertive foreign and security policy bolstered by mounting military and security expenditure. In May 2020 the CCP Politburo raised the “dual circulation” strategy, which involved expanding domestic demand, focusing on the domestic market, improving the country’s capacity for innovation, reducing dependence on foreign markets, and at the same time remaining open to the outside world. This was the first time that domestic demand and capacities were so explicitly enshrined in state policy as the dominant driver for the Chinese economy since the reform and opening-up period in the late 1970s. At the National People’s Congress (NPC) session in March 2023. Former Shanghai Party Secretary Li Qiang, ranked No. 2 in the Party’s Politburo Standing Committee (PSC), replaced Li Keqiang as China’s premier overseeing the State Council. Ding Xuexiang, ranked sixth in PSC, succeeded Han Zheng as executive vice-premier. Politburo members He Lifeng, Zhang Guoqing and Liu Guozhong became vice premiers. The leadership of the State Council, dominated by technocrats including Li Qiang, Ding Xuexiang, Liu Guozhong and Zhang Guoqing, is reinforcing such inwardlooking policy momentum with emphasis on internal circulation rather than external circulation. This policy aims to substitute imports of products and technology with domestic production to protect domestic industries from foreign competition. Unlike most of his predecessors who had been promoted to premiership, Li Qiang has no experience as a vice premier. Li’s appointment also demonstrated that Xi placed loyalty and trustworthiness above all else. The appointments of China’s top economic leaders are seen as part of Xi’s attempt to strengthen his control over the country’s economic institutions and policy making. At the same NPC session, China announced the establishment of the central S&T commission to beef up the CCP’s centralized and unified leadership over S&T-related work, and to move faster toward greater self-reliance in S&T. With the help of new technocrats in the leadership, Xi in his third term is accelerating the efforts to optimize and align every step of the innovation process. As China’s dual-circulation strategy that stresses “domestic circulation” over “international circulation” becomes new road map of development in Xi’s new era, domestic consumption and hinterland development, which helps China to rely less on the external world, is being further boosted by the central government’s favourable policies in the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021–2025) and beyond.

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China’s more domestic-focused development pattern is not a stopgap measure to deal with the economic challenges caused by the pandemic, but also a road map for China’s new economy development trajectory for the next 20–30 years (Global Times 2020). Although the dual-circulation strategy, which still stresses participation into global economy, gives some support to export-oriented coastal areas including the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area and Yangtze River Delta Region, larger beneficiaries from this domestic-focused strategy could be inland regions like the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle, other western and central Chinese provinces, or even the north-eastern heartland that was in a deepening economic malaise for decades. In the early stage of China’s reform and opening-up era, preferential economic policies were tilted towards eastern coastal regions to boost export-oriented manufacturing and foreign trade. The consequence of this distorted regional policy in combination with geographical factors have resulted in unbalanced regional development and widening regional disparities among the eastern, central and western regions. It was against such a background that China’s central government proposed the Western Development Strategy (WDS) in 1999 to accelerate development in western regions and reduce regional disparities (Zheng and Xiang 2013: 250). Shortly after this, the “Plan for the Rise of the Central Region” and the “Revitalization Plan for the North-eastern Region” were rolled out in 2002 in 2003 respectively to address the problem of widening regional disparities. These state-driven regional plans include policies such as offering preferential treatment and increased central fiscal transfers to the central, western and north-eastern regions. For example, in 1999, 29.01% of the central government’s fiscal transfers were allocated to Western China while in 2010 this ratio reached 39.42%, indicating a significant rising trend, especially after the implementation of WDS. The central government has also begun to channel more capital investment to the underdeveloped inland regions. According to China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the state’s investment in western development projects amounted to 6.85 trillion yuan between 2000 and 2017. The lion’s share of the state investment was devoted to infrastructure improvement in the inland regions. The Chinese authorities were convinced that infrastructure development is key to overcoming unfavourable geographical conditions and stimulating economic growth by reducing intraregional and interregional transportation costs for goods and people across the central, western and north-eastern regions (Yu 2018). Tax reduction and exemption have been the most important preferential policies to attract investment in the hinterland. Domestic and foreign-funded enterprises in Western China which belong to the category encouraged by the state enjoy 15% income tax rate till end of 2030 (Ministry of Finance of China 2020), as compared to the prevailing rates of 20 or 25% for foreign or domestic enterprises in other parts of China. The Chinese authorities’ efforts to achieve more balanced regional economic development and reduced regional disparities began to pay off only towards the end of the Hu Jintao–Wen Jiabao administration. The coefficient of variation, as a measure of regional economic inequality, has started to narrow down gradually between 2010 and 2014.

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Nevertheless, despite the fact that the hinterland economy developed more quickly than coastal areas, such achievements were obtained at the cost of an overall loss of economic efficiency in that a large number of resources were compulsorily allocated to these regions. Meanwhile, urban–rural income disparities in these regions continued widening during the period, and such gaps in Western China were much larger than on the national level (Zheng and Xiang 2013: 258). Since 60% of China’s total rural poverty population was located in Western China, the grim rural development situation in western China raised questions about the effectiveness of WDS aimed at reducing income disparities and poverty. After a decade of dazzling economic development since the implementation of “Revitalization Plan for the North-eastern Region” policy, economic growth rates in the three northeast provinces have slowed down sharply since 2013 and the economy has deteriorated continually over the past few years compared to the nation as a whole. The expanding urban–rural disparities in western China, wasteful infrastructure investment in inland provinces, and sluggish economic growth in Northeast China have reflected the limits and weaknesses of China’s state-driven regional strategy aimed at balanced development. After Xi came to power in 2012, the top leadership rolled out new strategies including the Targeted Poverty Alleviation and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to make existing regional development policies more effective. Targeted poverty alleviation played into China’s effort to reduce urban–rural disparities especially in inland provinces, while the BRI attempted to connect the vast landlocked western region to the outside world via new land and sea transport corridors. CCP’s zest for balanced development between coastal and inland regions originated from its egalitarian and self-reliance ideology since Mao’s time, and now western and other inland provinces could benefit even more from Xi’s concept of “dual-circulation,” which stressed domestic demand and supply chain, and was confirmed at the CCP Fifth Plenum in 2020. Under BRI, western China becomes important junctions for land and sea connectivity with Eurasia, Southeast Asia and South Asia via new transport corridors. The strong economic performance in western China, with Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle as a major hub, has been mainly led by infrastructure investment, capital spending from manufacturers, growth in retail sales, and the resilient export and import. Since the “dual circulation” strategy prioritises domestic demand and technological innovation, populous urban clusters centred on Chengdu, Chongqing and Xi’an, all of which boast large numbers of research institutes, universities and high-tech zones, will become new growth poles for the whole country. Many technocrats including Minister of National Defense Li Shangfu and Beijing Party Secretary Yin Li possess working experiences in western China. The north-eastern region is rich in various mineral and energy resources, and its traditional industrial sectors included iron and steel, automobiles, weapon manufacturing, shipbuilding, aircraft manufacturing, and oil and petroleum refining. The heavy industrial and chemical sectors that formed the backbone of the north-eastern region’s local economy could thrive again in the new normal of “dual circulation” that

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emphasises domestic supply of modern equipment, high-tech products and raw materials. Some technocrats like Liu Guozhong and Zhang Guoqing, two vice premiers, were trained or advanced their career in that region. From Beijing‘s perspective, the affluent coastal areas are still important for development, but their functional importance has changed under the “dual circulation” strategy. The most-developed Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area still has potential in promoting financial connectivity between the offshore Hong Kong and Macau and onshore places in mainland China. By leveraging on these cities’ various competitive advantages, Beijing aims to transform the Greater Bay Area into a world-class city cluster by 2030. The GBA development initiative requires the re-positioning of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau as a single economic entity. Xiongan New Area’s biggest advantage is its political support, whereas its biggest uncertainty also comes from the same reason. When Chinese government has shown its will and capability to shorten Xiongan‘s development time, the remaining question for Xiongan is how long the government can maintain its effort. As the largest island for mainland China, Hainan’s economy has lagged from other coastal provinces like Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu for decades, and this time, the Free Trade Port arrangement can offer the island province a new opportunity to catch up through institutional innovations and bolder opening-up policies. The Yangtze River Delta Region has been chosen to continue to spearhead economic growth under the “dual circulation” strategy, but new emphasis upon “integrated” and “high-quality” development was reiterated by Xi when he visited Anhui province in August 2020. Although China has a huge domestic market, but the market is fragmented even within various regions like the Yangtze River Delta or northeast China. Successful integration requires better infrastructure, free flow of capital, technology, products and human resources, and coordination among local governments. If the Yangtze River Delta can achieve such high-quality domestic integration as required by the State Council’s Master Plan for Integrated Regional Development of Yangtze River Delta in December 2019, the region may continue to consolidate its competitive advantages in manufacturing, technology and service industry as compared to other regions. The empowerment of inward-looking technocrats enhances China’s interiororiented development strategy that focuses on domestic supply chain and demand expansion in inland provinces. Thanks to their participation in the state-led indigenous S&T research and innovation, their policy priorities are about self-reliance and domestic capacity building. They also support government interventions in economic activities and the pivotal role of state businesses in national economy. The Chinese model of state capitalism has been prominently discussed in the study of the country’s meteoric economic growth in the past three decades, of which a fascinating part is the miraculous rise of a large number of state-owned conglomerates that have aggressively expanded their shares of the global market (Chan 2009; Nolan 2001; Kuijs et al. 2005; Fligstein and Zhang 2011). A large number of technocrats including Zhang Guoqing, Yuan Jiajun and Ma Xingrui advanced their careers in the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the military, aerospace and other strategic industries. They represent the interest from state businesses, especially those deemed by the

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CCP as vital for national security. Although economic reforms have led to significant expansion of the private sector in China, the strategic sectors of the economy, which include oil, electricity, telecommunications, shipping, aviation, steel and machinery manufacturing, are still dominated by a number of giant SOEs. Some 40% of China’s non-agricultural GDP is estimated to come from SOEs and entities directly controlled by SOEs. Xi’s leadership has been reinforcing Leninist control over SOE operations by intensifying the Party committees’ role in corporate governance, regularizing the Party’s disciplinary inspections of SOEs, and enhancing the functions of the Board of Supervisors, to forestall pervasive corruption and excessive speculation. In this period, the Party has transformed its indirect control of SOEs through personnel reshuffles into a more heavy-handed approach of directly interfering in decisionmaking and management of SOEs on a daily basis. All the technocrats with SOE backgrounds support Xi’s slogan of “enhancing the Party’s leadership over SOEs,” which has far-reaching implications upon regulatory dilemmas, corporate governance and endogenous challenges linked to China’s enormous state businesses. The COVID-19 outbreak was precisely a case in point that convinced the Party of its grip over SOEs, which act as a buffer against internal economic shocks and external threats during pandemics and crises. The Party has enabled state businesses to be increasingly engaged in the disaster management, which made technocratic SOE leaders more exposed to crisis management. In both conventional Chinese wisdom and the CCP’s discourse, crisis mentality is valued as a virtue. But preparing for crisis comes with huge costs, so it was reeled in at the beginning of the Chinese economic reform, launched in the late 1970s, for the sake of efficiency and economic growth. This has slowly shifted in recent times. Officials were told by Xi to be prepared for all kinds of crises and challenges as there were no quick solutions to many of the problems. Xi has said, even before the COVID-19 pandemic started, that China must be on guard against “black swan” risks and “grey rhino” events. China officials increasingly have to consider the potential risks that are both domestic and international, conventional (such as financial crises and military conflicts) and non-conventional (such as epidemics and climate change). Officials these days can lose their positions due to poor crisis management rather than an underperforming economy. Wuhan officials were removed after the mishandling of the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020 and Henan officials were sacked after a deadly flood in 2021. Over the years, state business juggernauts in insurance, contracted construction, transportation, energy, and agricultural produce, have emerged as non-negligible interest groups that constantly impose institutional pressures upon disaster policy formulation as well as pre- and post-disaster actions. The Chinese government requested SOEs, especially those large-scale SOEs controlled by the central government (yangqi), to take active parts in relief operations during the pandemic. Under disaster relief and other emergency circumstances, SOEs have played a significant role in carrying out public policy objectives. The technocratic management under Party leadership and state ownership are formally justified by the government’s need to overcome market failure in a wide range of areas including public

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service delivery and emergency responses. Technocrats, therefore, are risk-averse and overwhelmed by crisis mentality in making decisions, which makes them qualified for Xi’s criteria of “preparing for the worst scenario.” In the controversy over the relationship between SOEs and private businesess, technocrats support the overexpansion of gigantic SOEs, the breeding ground for many technocratic leaders. In another word, they justify guojin mintui, or “the state advances, the private sector retreats,” a phrase that best depicts the Chinese model of state capitalism, where SOEs have been competing with the domestic private sectors and foreign companies on an unequal footing. While the private sectors have difficulty accessing bank finance, SOEs have been favored by state-owned banks that often provide them with cheap credit and massive loans. The government also offers SOEs access to cheap land and undervalued natural resources. Without these policy benefits, many Chinese SOEs were actually lossmakers in most years. SOEs’ huge profit also comes from their monopoly of certain lucrative industries that exclude the private sectors. Sectors like military, aerospace, petrochemical, telecom, hydropower generation, railway transport and oceanic shipping are oligopolized by a few SOEs. Even for deregulated industries like shipbuilding, real estate, coal mining, automotive and food processing, SOEs are getting larger market share due to their backing from government and state-owned banks. During the Party’s Third Plenum in November 2013, Xi Jinping received a mandate to give the market a “decisive role” in allocating economic resources. The leadership endorsed a package of economic reform tasks, which included introducing more private and foreign investments into SOEs (mixed-ownership reform, or hunhe suoyouzhi gaige), claiming a larger shares of dividends from SOEs for social welfare purposes, marketizing prices of water, natural gas, oil, electricity, transportation and telecommunications and opening up of all sectors, except those prohibited or restricted by the government, to various types of market competition. Many technocrats, however, are from these industries that prohibit or restrict opening to private businesses. Therefore, they’re not interested in pushing forward marketization or privatization of state sectors. On the contrary, they like to tighten the Party’s control over SOEs, especially centrally-administered SOEs, to forge a different type of corporate governance that departs from traditional Western models. Being resentful about the Party’s lax control over SOEs, Xi and his technocratic colleagues are trying to push China’s state capitalism into a new stage in which Leninist means of expanding Party committee’s power in corporate governance and routinizing disciplinary inspections are being reinstalled in SOEs. The CCP Third Plenum in 2013 established the Central Leading Group on Comprehensively Deepening Reforms (zhongyang quanmian shenhua gaige lingdao xiaozu), which was headed by Xi himself. This indicated Xi’s determination to push through the SOE reform that was halted by the 2008 global financial crisis. However, the implementation of SOE reforms aimed at vested interests had been fraught with difficulties between the Third Plenum and the 20th Party Congress, a time frame when Xi was still seeking to control fragmented state sectors that had been dominated by other Party oligarchs for a long time. Reforms like the increase of SOEs‘ dividend rates to state coffers have long been blocked by vested interests.

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With the strengthened Party oversight or even direct interventions in daily management, the Party leadership could take this opportunity to regain the control over state assets that had fallen into the hands of agents of those oligarchs. Xi has been promoting technocrats to strengthen the Party’s grip over SOEs. In addition to the existing nomenklatura system that impacts appointment of senior executives, the Party is exerting more influences upon SOEs’ daily operations and major decision makings through allowing Party committees to play a leading role in managing SOEs (Red Flag Document 2017). Those technocrats who best represent the Party’s interest and ideology in SOEs are being promoted to higher positions. Previously, Party committees within SOEs were only in charge of organizing after-hours activities among Party members, and detached from board of directors that made key decisions regarding the operation and investment of SOEs. Now Party committees or Party groups (dangzu) “would be embedded into the corporate governance structure” while the “Party construction work would be embedded into the corporate development” (Red Flag Document 2017). The core issue relating to Xi’s reform of SOEs is how to maintain a balance between the new emerging forces of business leaders—who have benefited and continue to benefit from economic reform—and the Party-state. Many scholars take the view that economic reform in authoritarian systems is likely to lead to increased liberalization and in the long run, as new social groups demand political influence, to some form of democracy (Harding 1987; Fewsmith 2001; Gilley 2004). This is the so-called “King’s Dilemma” in which autocratic rulers undermine the basis of their power by introducing reform (Huntington 1970). However, in the Chinese case economic liberalization and decentralization have significantly slowed down due to lack of political liberalization and power recentralization at the top level. The promotion of technocrats to top leadership has intensified the authoritarian means of consolidating Party’s control over SOE management, with Party overseers able to curb corruption and force executives to be more risk averse. Yet unless the Party-state weans its SOEs off subsidies, cheap loans and undervalued resources and force them to stand on their own in real market competition, these state conglomerates will remain low efficient in maximizing shareholder value for the Party-state as the major investor and owner of these SOEs.

5.4 International Implications Xi’s promotion of technocrats with experience in military conglomerates and research institutes indicates his vision of building up a techno-security state (Cheung 2022), or an innovation-centred, security maximising regime that prioritises the building of technological, defence and national security capabilities. In Xi’s time, China has significantly elevated the importance of national security concerns and technological innovation in the country’s overall priorities. The country’s expansive national security concerns are based on its perceptions of heightened threats from home and

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abroad and on the powerful influence of domestic pro-security coalitions, especially the emerging MIC. Thanks to the help from other top technocrats with S&T backgrounds, including Ding Xuexiang and Chen Xi, Xi has co-opted a large number of tech officials into the CCP Central Committee, which has invested considerable time, effort and political capital to establish an expansive techno-security state based upon Xi’s strategic and ideological vision in the new era. As compared to leaders with training in economics and social sciences, those tech-savvy officials represent interest groups in the MIC and emphasise indigenous capacity building rather than opening up and globalisation. The new wave of appointments of technocrats came amidst the strategic shift of the United States to maintain as large of a lead as possible over China in foundational technologies. In October 2022, the U.S. Commerce Department released sweeping export controls to throttle China’s ability to make and access advanced chips, one of Beijing‘s self-identified chokepoints critical to a wide swath of its economic and military ambitions (The Wall Street Journal 2022). The updated export controls restricted China’s ability to both purchase and manufacture certain high-end chips used in military applications and build on prior policies, company-specific actions, and less public regulatory, legal, and enforcement actions taken by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (2022). In response, Xi at the 20th Party Congress called on cadres to regard S&T as the primary productive force, talent as the primary resource, and innovation as the primary driver of growth. More tech officials are expected to be promoted to influential positions in subsequent years. Pivoting to technocracy represents the changing national mechanisms for extending the CCP authority over the economy and underpinning a CCP Inc. ecosystem with a unique internal logic and new adaptability to respond to policy shifts. The expanded CCP agenda includes “market steerage,” not just economic growth. That is, the party now seeks to achieve very concrete and specific economicsrelated outcomes. Of these, it is prioritizing high-tech industrial development, but it also aims to shape a broad range of key “strategic” areas (Naughton and Boland 2023). Technocrats who show allegiance to the Party are playing a crucial role in steering China’s state capitalism and achieving strategic objectives of the Party. In another word, Xi’s leadership is recruiting prominent engineers and executives from strategic industries to improve the competitiveness of the “CCP Inc” in the geopolitical and geo-economic rivalry with the United States and its allies. The “CCP Inc.” is a Chinese system with an intentionally designed hierarchical structure that facilitates coordinated action of state-owned and private firms to achieve CCP’s priority goals with a wide variety of instruments (Naughton and Boland 2023). Business and tech leaders selected from the “CCP Inc” have soaring ambitions that extend far beyond economic growth and profit maximization, explicitly including national greatness and strategic positioning. New technocrats are a formidable and well-resourced group of coordinated actors who have consistency and adaptability that allow the CCP Inc to achieve significant objectives. Tech officials, as compared to their colleagues trained in social sciences and humanities, are more goal-oriented and

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efficiency driven, focusing on achieving strategic targets without much consideration about social or economic cost entailed. Many technocrats have studying or working experiences in foreign countries, which help them acquire international perspectives of building up the “CCP Inc” and developing tech capabilities. Such overseas stints, however, will not make them liberal-minded or democracy-inclined since they are sent by the country to acquire cutting-edge science and technology rather than being exposed to liberal arts education of Western style. Before going abroad, these tech people have to go through long vetting processes that include political screening and academic examinations. Usually they have limited contacts with local communities or cultures and are engrossed in technology learning when they are overseas. These technocrats admire the advanced technologies developed by western countries, not their political models of democracy. Once in power they may welcome international S&T exchanges, but remain sceptical about Western political values and ideology. They are politically conservative and not interested in institutional reforms. Seeking technological supremacy is their key solution to international disputes and geopolitical tensions. The growing number of technocrats from military-related science and technology departments indicates that China’s industrial or even post-industrial society today still takes on the features of the warriors’ society of the Mao era. Instead of peace, every industrial society has a Wehrwirtschaft, a term for a “preparedness economy”, or a mobilised society (Bell 1974, p. 356). A mobilised society is one in which the major resources of the country are concentrated on a few specific objectives defined by the government. In a mobilised society/preparedness economy tied to military and war preparedness, technocrats arising from the military–industrial complex tend to become the backbones of the bureaucratic administration. In the recent revival of technocracy, Xi has nominated cadres based on their technical expertise outside of the political circles, many of whom are involved in the strategic weaponry programs covering missile, aircraft, helicopter and nuclear development. Some of them will assume even higher positions and reshape China’s economic and foreign strategy in the next five to 10 years. The growing technocracy in the Chinese leadership will accentuate the builtup of techno-security state and emphasise internal security and information control capabilities across a wide array of domains. Such security-oriented posture will paradoxically increase the senses of insecurity of other countries including the United States, leading to intensified security dilemma in East Asia and the world in the future. The security dilemma, which derives from the realist tradition of international relations theory, describes a situation in which war can occur between two or more states where none of those involved desired such an outcome (Herz 1951; Butterfield 1951; Wheeler and Booth 1992). As a direct consequence of the international system’s anarchic nature, every nation state has the Hobbesian fear and suspicion that other nations may intend harm and thus a war can occur despite neither desiring such an outcome.

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Butterfield (1951) emphasises the tragic consequence of the security dilemma, as war can occur even without the participation of a revisionist or revolutionary state seeking to alter the status quo. He claims that the greatest war in history “could be produced between two Powers both of which were desperately anxious to avoid a conflict of any sort” (Butterfield 1951, pp. 19–20). In such a security dilemma, due to other countries’ uncertainties about China’s intent, they will view China’s beefing up of its techno-security strength as an immediate threat to their national security, leading to escalating arms race or even military conflicts in the end. Such security dilemma exists not only between China the United States, the two superpowers competing for the global supremacy, but also between China and its neighbours in Asia. Garrett and Glaser (1995, p. 75) note that “as they seek to enhance China’s military capabilities…the Chinese have so far shown little willingness to consider that possibility that their self-help efforts to enhance China’s security may exacerbate the sense of insecurity of other states in East Asia”. Even with benign intentions, China would appear to be an ideal state to fall victim to the security dilemma (Collins 2000, p. 133). These countries perceive China’s intensions in the disputed Spratly Islands, Senkaku (diaoyudao) Islands, China-India borders and Taiwan issue with huge suspicion, not sure about whether China plans to assume regional hegemony and return to the historical tributary relationship ancient China once enjoyed with neighbouring countries. Despite its repeated declaration of benign intentions of not seeking global hegemony, China’s military and technological modernization has made the United States call the rising power “the most consequential and systemic challenge” to the U.S. national security and to a “free and open international system” (U.S. Department of Defense 2022). Under Xi’s military-civil fusion strategy, Chinese technocrats are ready to integrate the compartmentalised civilian and defence portions of the Chinese economy into a seamless, cohesive dual-use system suitable for military and national security apparatuses. Obsessed with indigenous innovation, Chinese technocrats tend to coordinate the national economic development closely with military and security goals, which will increase the risks of escalating trade war or strategic confrontation with the United States or other neighbouring countries. With overseas exposure in their early stages of career, Chinese technocratic leaders seek to “go out” and shape the environment outside China, first nearby and then globally. “Going out” is not only expected to contribute to economic growth, but also to create an international environment that is favourable to China in security and technological dimensions. Beijing ideologically conservative and realist-minded, new technocratic leaders will pursue a more pro-active and assertive foreign strategy in shaping and protecting China’s external security environment, rather than the previously more reactive and low-key posture in Jiang and Hu’s tenures.

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People’s Daily. 2015. Xi Jinping Sending Ultimatum to Factions and Cliques, (in Chinese), 12 January 2015. http://cpc.people.com.cn/pinglun/n/2015/0112/c241220-26369567.html. Accessed 30 Jan 2023. Quah, Jon S. T. 2013. Minimizing Corruption in China: Is This an Impossible Dream? Maryland Series in Contemporary Asian Studies 4 (Article 1). Red Flag Document (hongqi Wengao). 2017. On strengthening the Party’s leadership over SOEs (lun jiaqiang dang dui guoyouqiye de lingdao), http://www.crc.chinacnr.com/culture-377.html. Accessed 18 Sept 2022. Root, Hilton. 1996. Corruption in China: Has it become systemic? Asian Survey 36 (8): 741–757. Singh, Swaran. 1999. Rise and fall of the PLA’s business Empire: Implications for China’s civilmilitary relations. Strategic Analysis 23(2). The Economist. 2002. Systemic Corruption: Something Rotten in the State of China. 14 February 2002. http://www.economist.com/node/988457. Accessed on 1 June 2020. The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security. 2022. Commerce Implements New Export Controls on Advanced Computing and Semiconductor Manufacturing Items to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), 7 October 2022. https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/ documents/about-bis/newsroom/press-releases/3158-2022-10-07-bis-press-release-advancedcomputing-and-semiconductor-manufacturing-controls-final/file. Accessed 1 Feb 2023 The Wall Street Journal. 2022. China’s Xi Stacks Government with Science and Tech Experts Amid Rivalry with U.S.” 18 November 2022. https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-xi-stacksgovernment-with-science-and-tech-experts-amid-rivalry-with-u-s-11668772682. Accessed 27 Jan 2023. Global Times. 2020. Dual-circulation strategy becomes new road map of growth, 27 Oct 2020. https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1204832.shtml. Accessed 11 Jan 2023. Transparency International. 2022. Corruption Perceptions Index 2021. https://www.transparency. org/en/cpi/2021. Accessed on 1 Mar 2023. U.S. Department of Defense. 2022. Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China (2022 China Military Power Report). https://s3.documentcloud.org/doc uments/23321290/2022-military-and-security-developments-involving-the-peoples-republicof-china.pdf. Accessed 2 Feb 2023. Wheeler, Nicholas J. and Booth, Ken. 1992. The Security Dilemma. In Dilemma of World Politics: International Issues in a Changing World, 29–60, ed. John Baylis and N.J. Rengger. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Wortzel, Larry M. 2000. The Administration Must Name Chinese Defense Companies in the United States. http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2000/10/administration-mustname-chinese-defense-companies. Accessed 1 Feb 2023. Wu, Guoguang. 2022. New Faces of Leaders, New Factional Dynamics: CCP Leadership Politics Following the 20th Party Congress. China Leadership Monitor, Issue 74. Yang, Dali. 2004. Has Corruption Peaked in China? Singapore: East Asian Institute Background Brief. No. 214. Yu, Hong. 2018. Regional Development in China: Xi Jinping’s Agenda and the Challenges. China: An International Journal, 16 (3). Zheng, Lu, and Xiang, Deng. 2013. Regional policy and regional development: A case study of China’s Western development strategy. Annales Universitatis Apulensis Series Oeconomica, 15(1)

Chapter 6

Discussion and Conclusion: Technocracy and the Future of CCP

The final part draws conclusions from evidence and analysis provided in previous chapters. It reveals that technocrats with expertise and experiences in military-related and high-tech industries like aerospace and telecommunications may assume even higher positions and reshape China’s future economic development strategy. Behind this new round of technocracy is the emergence of China’s military–industrialtechnological complex, which refers to a close relationship among the government, the defense industry and tech sectors. Such security strengthening effort will produce unintended consequences and lead to intensified security dilemma in East Asia and the world. Technocracy is not a new phenomenon in the CCP history, but in Xi’s time, such trend has been significantly reinforced. In most of Mao’s period when technocrats were still not preponderant in China’s national affairs, forward-thinking defencetechnical leaders played critical roles in formulating the science and technology (S&T) planning which later on had profound and far-reaching impact upon China’s military, economic and technological trajectories. In the context of the Cold War, Chinese leaders believed in a techno-national development doctrine that rationalised expensive strategic weapons efforts, setting up an organizational style that strategic weapons leaders were promoted as the essential complement of the doctrine. The integration of these science and technical personnel into the strategic military and economic programmes paved way to the political rise of technocrats in the reform era. In the early stage of reform, technocrats with engineering backgrounds like Li Peng, Hu Qili and Jiang Zemin were promoted to top positions in the CCP Politburo Standing Committee (PSC). Later on an increasing proportion of senior officials had educational background in the social sciences rather than in engineering and the natural sciences. After Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, a large number of technocrats with real educational and working experiences in the S&T realm were promoted to key positions.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 G. Chen, Political Implications of China’s Technocracy in the Reform Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-2977-1_6

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The growing number of technocrats in the Party-state reflects China’s transition from Mao’s society ruled by warriors to the industrial society ruled by engineers, planners and producers in the reform era. In the transition from industrial (mass production) to post-industrial (service-oriented) society, China’s technocracy is shifting its centrality towards new science-based industries like artificial intelligence, aerospace technology and telecommunications. Yet the bountifulness of technocrats from military-related science and technology departments indicates that China’s industrial or even post-industrial society today still takes on the features of the warriors’ society of the Mao era. The ongoing technocratisation is driven by the CCP’s accelerating efforts to optimize the innovation chain and achieve technological self-sufficiency in the strategic rivalry with the United States and its allies.

6.1 Authoritarian Resilience The study of Chinese technocracy reveals not only the essence of CCP elite politics, but more importantly, its adaptation to formidable governance challenges like the international technological sanctions and internal innovation deficiency. The study of adaptability in authoritarian regimes, which takes seriously previously neglected institutional pillars of non-democratic governance, has been revived to explain adaptive initiatives undertaken by resilient authoritarian rulers in coping with chronic governance challenges (Schedler 2009). Current scholarship has touched upon many aspects of the CCP’s re-institutionalization endeavour for adaptation and co-optation purposes, which includes the professionalization of the civil service (Brødsgaard 2002), rebuilding of Party cells (Pieke 2009), the experiment of “intra-Party democracy” (Li 2009; Zheng 2012) and regular career cadre training in Party schools (Shambaugh 2008). Now analysis of the reviving technocracy in maintaining the CCP’s “authoritarian resilience” (Nathan 2003; Heilmann and Perry 2011; Shambaugh 2012: 8–22; Wang and Tan 2013: 199) is timely and helpful for the understanding of the CCP’s adaptability in the geopolitical and technological confrontation with the United States. Through reviewing the evolution of technocracy in the People’s Republic of China (PRC)‘s different stages, the book attempts to explain the CCP’s “authoritarian resilience” from the technocratic angle that combines politics with technology development. Based on categorisation of prominent technocrats by the strategic industries they are from, it tries to build up connections between their career success and China’s strategic interest in developing relevant industrial and technological capacities. Admitting the limits of such effort in promoting indigenous innovations, the book has discussed different fundamental challenges the Chinese leaders needed to address in different stages of development and to what extent the technocracy has been effective in addressing these challenges. The book is designed to enrich the authoritarian resilience theory that attributes CCP’s resiliency mostly to remarkable economic achievement (Wang and Tan 2013), ‘inner-party democracy‘ or social management (Wang and Huang 2013).

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The study of institutionalization in authoritarian regimes, which takes seriously previously neglected political pillars of non-democratic governance, was revived when new institutionalist studies of authoritarianism shifted their focus to institutions of representation and division of power that people tend to associate with liberaldemocrat regimes (Schedler 2009). Traditional institutionalism focused on institutions of repression and manipulation that were distinctively authoritarian, such as the Party state and secret police. In contrast, new institutionalist research on authoritarianism is keen to look at institutions of representation and division of power, such as federalism and legalism, as well as discussing under what circumstances non-repressive sectors might be repressive. In Huntington’s (1968) classic formulation, maintaining political order in changing societies requires maintaining a balance between the capacity of elite state institutions and the volume of mass political mobilization. There has been significant divergence among China specialists over the future of the CCP. Hence the study of the relationship between institutionalization and participation, which was argued by Winckler (1984: 483) as the most important domestic relationship in shaping the political transition of authoritarian regimes will shed light on the CCP’s ability to co-opt tech talents and adapt to an increasingly hostile external environment. Promoting innovation to support technological development is gaining prominence in China’s policy agenda. The CCP’s fifth plenum in October 2020 approved proposals on formulating China’s 14th Five-Year Plan (FYP) (2021–2025) and a vision for development by 2035, both of which had a strong focus on indigenous technological innovation and other domestic capabilities. Innovation was given top priority among the major tasks listed in the 14th FYP. Both the 14th FYP and the 2035 Vision are essential for China to avoid the “middle-income trap”, a development stage in which a developing country attains a certain level of income but then stagnates and fails when it fails to complete industrialisation and modernisation because it cannot progress from low-cost manufacturing to high-technology industries. According to the plenum’s communique, by 2035, China should have “basically achieved” its goal of becoming a modern socialist country. This is well ahead of the previously planned year for achieving that goal in 2049, the 100th anniversary of the PRC. The earlier target year for modernisation could be due to China’s confidence in its economic growth. In separate comments, Xi said it was entirely possible that China could double the size of its economy by 2035, which would require an average annual growth rate of 4.7% over the next 15 years (The Economist 2020). Although one of the imperatives for the 2035 Vision is to uplift per capita GDP to the level of “moderately developed countries” (zhongdeng fada guojia), or high-income countries, the communique does not mention any specific target for GDP growth down the road. Two factors could have accounted for this: China truly wants to transition away from an obsession with growth at all costs, or that the leadership is not certain about China’s economic prospect amidst the unprecedented pandemic and confrontation with the United States. Previous FYPs often stressed quantitative growth targets like doubling (per capita) GDP every 10 years.

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Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and intensified tension with the United States, China is relying more on its indigenous innovation and other domestic capabilities. For a long time, with the expansion of the Global Value Chain (GVC) in China, many Chinese firms have relied on technologies provided by foreign multinational companies. Since 2018, growing China-US tension in technology has exposed China’s vulnerability due to its heavy reliance on foreign technology. The 14th FYP, a strategic plan for the whole government, now centres around technological innovation, economic self-reliance and a cleaner environment. Since the beginning of 2020 the Chinese leadership has given particular emphasis to the “dual circulation strategy” (guonei guoji shuangxunhuan), which stresses “domestic circulation” over “international circulation”, an export-oriented policy adopted since the 1990s that had fuelled China’s growth and forged its economic connections with the outside world. Xi Jinping told National People’s Congress delegates in May 2020 that China was pursuing a new development plan in which “domestic circulation plays the dominant role” and China must treat domestic demand as the starting point and foothold as the country is accelerating the building of a complete domestic consumption system, and promoting innovation in science, technology and other areas. China’s confidence in relying on domestic capabilities partially comes from the shrinking economic gap with the United States, the world’s largest economy, as well as from its advancement in science and technology in the 13th FYP period (2016–2020) (Table 3.3). Acknowledged lack of high-quality S&T innovation, the communique emphasised “self-reliance in science and technology as the strategic support for national development”, vowing to make “major breakthroughs in key core technologies”, become a global leader in innovation, and achieve “new industrialization, informatization, urbanization, and agricultural modernization” (CCP Central Committee 2020). Many of the long-term goals highlighted in the document were tech-oriented. China planned to increase its R&D expenditure by at least seven per cent annually during the 14th FYP to make breakthroughs in “chokepoint” technologies. In particular, a state-led innovation system under the “whole-of-nation” approach is instrumental to achieve policy goals such as indigenous innovation and supply chain resilience. China’s R&D expenditure, which grew 18.1% annually between 1995 and 2022, is ranked second in the world, only behind that of the United States (Qian 2023). Technocrats, or officials with S&T expertise, are supposed to play a crucial role in the process. The CCP’s promotion of technocrats is closely related to its strategic emphasis on S&T self-reliance and innovation. Among these technocrats, those from industries such as petroleum or mechanical engineering were fewer in numbers than in the past; they were offset by those from the military, aerospace industries or other strategic new industries. Notably, some of these officials also have military-related science and technology backgrounds. Behind this new round of technocracy is China’s ambition of applying advanced military technology to civilian fields and integrating the military industry into local economic development (Shih 2017). To achieve these goals, China has put a large

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amount of resources into the military industry and has accumulated highly advanced technology in order to catch up with the United States, and some believe that the military industry might even become the main source of China’s future technological innovation and a leading force for economic growth. At the National People’s Congress session in March 2023, when Li Qiang became the new premier, China unveiled plans for a sweeping central government reorganisation, including the formation of the National Financial Regulatory Administration, the National Data Bureau and the revamp of its Ministry of Science and Technology under the newly established Central Science and Technology Commission. The changes concentrate power in the hands of Xi as the CCP leader. By tightening the party’s control over a broader swath of government, Beijing seeks to ensure its financial system and tech sectors, especially manufacturing of semiconductors and big data management, are prepared for any systematic risks in geopolitics, financial market or cyber security. The National Financial Regulatory Administration, which replaced the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission and expanded its role, began overseeing most of the financial industry—except for the securities industry. The China Securities Regulatory Commission’s investor protection responsibilities, as well as the central bank, or the People’s Bank of China (PBOC)’s responsibilities for protecting financial consumers and regulating finance holding companies, are shifted to the new financial regulator. The new National Data Bureau took on some of the cybersecurity regulator’s responsibilities, and started to play a major role in establishing a national data system and promoting digital economy. The National Data Bureau operated under the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the economic planning department of the State Council. China established the central S&T commission and restructured its Ministry of Science and Technology to better allocate resources in key and core technologies, and move faster toward greater self-reliance in S&T. The central S&T commission is aimed at centralizing the CCP’s leadership over S&T work, while the restructured ministry will operate as the office for the central S&T commission and play a bigger role in improving a new system for mobilizing the nation to make technological breakthroughs.

6.2 Elite Politics and Succession Issue The rise of technocrats also has significant implications upon the CCP elite politics and succession issue. It not only provides new patterns of career advancement for party cadres, but also reshapes the succession model in which future top leaders will be produced. As discussed in Chap. 4, scholars have various views on party cadres’ career advancement, with some attributing the possibility of promotion to relationships (guanxi) and network politics, while others focusing on cadres’ educational and

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professional qualifications, or their economic performances in local governmental positions, and patronage and political networks at the central level. The reinforced technocratic momentum seems to support the viewpoints focusing on educational and professional qualifications, disrupting the previously prevailing factional politics based on guanxi and network politics. However, in Xi’s first two terms, region-based factional background still played a crucial role in determining many of his protégés’ career advancement. Xi has three region-based political networks that are comprised of Xi’s former subordinates in the Fujian province, Zhejiang province and Shanghai Municipality. Xi spent 17 years in Fujian beginning in the mid-1980s, then served as Zhejiang‘s party chief between 2002 and 2007, and Shanghai‘s party chief in 2007. Li Qiang and Ding Xuexiang, two of his top aids now sitting in the PSC, worked for him when he was in Zhejiang and Shanghai respectively. These two technocrats, if without such co-working experience under Xi in their early life, probably would never have the chance of joining the top echelon of power. Local officials always face the age dilemma (Gao 2013), in which provincial- and municipal-level officials have few prospects for being promoted to the above-level positions due to age restrictions and limited availability of leading positions at the national level. Thus ambitious local cadres encounter a double barrier in the form of age restrictions and term limits. Most of them never manage to overcome these barriers. They get stuck in their career and experience only lateral movement. After Xi completely consolidated power, however, such factional factors based on provinces are increasingly giving way to technocratic backgrounds in the CCP’s promotion of cadres. Economic performances also become less relevant, as most technocrats are directly involved in specific R&D projects in their early career rather than local economic development. Nevertheless, the growing tech professionalism in Chinese bureaucracy cannot rule out the importance of patronage and political networks at the central level, as most young tech elites are still affiliated to nationlevel research institutes either tied to the central government or the military, which link them to powerful state leaders. Xi himself provides patronage to technocrats from the Tsinghua University, his alma mater, via his university roommate Mr. Chen Xi, who later became director of the CCP Central Organisation Department. Increasingly working experiences at the tech departments rather than the CCYL offer the fast track for party cadres to overcome the age dilemma in their career advancement. Career advancement is closely related to age, and regardless of political connections or professional competence, party cadres still have to carefully consider how to move up the career ladder without being caught in the so-called age dilemma. If cadres follow the beaten track in their career, serving five years in each promotion, they will not be able to make it to the top before they reach the upper age limit for further promotion. Therefore, it is important to ascend more rapidly by getting into the fast lane of cadre promotion. In Xi’s time the CCYL route is no longer the valid fast track to the top positions, and the most efficient way of circumventing the age dilemma is participation in techrelated projects or work. Due to the limited availability of key positions in the central government, ambitious cadres have to find fast tracks to overcome the double barrier

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in the form of age restrictions and term limits. Kostka and Yu (2015) agree that age restrictions, the limited number of positions at the municipal level, and the lack of networks linked to provincial leaders reduce promotional prospects, but, unlike Gao (2013), they also point to low levels of education as an important factor hindering county leaders’ career advancement. As the overall educational level of party cadres has increased significantly over the years, college degrees are not sufficient for their career advancement. Graduates of humanities are not technocrats; nor are graduates of economics and social sciences (Li 2001, p. 27). In the future, research and working experiences in hard science areas may provide the launching pads for future high-flyers in the Party. Even the CCYL is recruiting young cadres with S&T backgrounds these days. With such technocratic transformation, the CCYL may continue to serve as a cradle for party-state leaders. He Junke, who became the first secretary of CCYL in 2018 and one of the youngest ministerial-level officials then, graduated from the space technology department at the National University of Defense Technology in Changsha, Hunan province in 1991. After graduation, he spent 14 years in the aerospace industry, where he rose through the ranks to a top position at a research institute of China Aerospace Mechanical and Electrical Corporation. The CCYL once lost some of its sway after Xi came to power and its function as an incubator of political talent shrank, but it could be making a comeback with He’s appointment and recruitment of young tech talents. In discussing the possibility of moving up the career ladder to join the administrative elite, Li and Walder (2001) focus on the time of entry into the CCP: early entry allows an individual to go through an extended process of screening and training, which provides the time and opportunity for evaluation of desired attributes, such as loyalty and ability. Early membership also promotes the Party’s sponsorship of education. Thus, unlike Gao (2013), they claim that educational attainment is a result of career advancement, rather than a cause. In short, the earlier that someone attains Party membership, the better are that person’s chances of benefiting from Party-sponsored educational opportunities and entry into the administrative elite. As indicated in Yuan Jiajun and Ma Xingrui‘s cases (Chap. 4), early party membership may not be so important any more, as the Party can always find and co-opt prominent tech talents after they make progress in their work. Power succession is the core of Chinese elite politics. The emerging technocracy will profoundly influence the politics of power succession, which can most reflect the nature of elite politics in a changing political context. In democracies, it is relatively easy to handle the problem of power succession. The selection of top leaders such as “President” or “Prime Minister” is institutionalised, and it is done in a more or less predictable manner by some “rules of game” in the form of legal regulations and constitutional conventions (Rose and Suleiman 1980). Although various mechanisms of election and selection of the leadership exist within the CCP, the Party remains undemocratic. Without transparent institutions concerning leadership change as in a democracy, the Chinese leadership has to find other means to cope with the succession issue.

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The succession issue has been affecting the country’s political stability since the establishment of the PRC in 1949. Mao Zedong ruled China for several decades, but he still needed to worry about power succession. Since he owned ultimate power, he was supposed to be able to appoint anyone of his choice to be his successor. Yet, during his time, bitter political struggles that resulted from power succession occurred and plunged the country into chaos, as in the cases of his appointed successors Liu Shaoqi and Lin Biao (Rush 1974; Dittmer 1974). After returning to power, Deng Xiaoping realised the importance of power succession. As a victim of Mao’s personal dictatorship, Deng called for the reform of China’s political and leadership system. To institutionalise China’s power succession was one of the key agenda items in Deng’s reform plan (Deng 1984). However, power succession during the Deng era also did not go smoothly, as evidenced by the ousting of Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang by irregular political means (Baum 1997). The party leadership after Deng has made enormous efforts in institutionalising elite politics. Many formal institutions have been established, but informal rules continue to play a role in handling power succession. It is worth noting that formal and informal politics can be hardly separated when one examines elite politics. This is so because with the institutionalisation of elite politics, most informal politics take place within and between formal institutions. Compared to the Maoist era and even the Deng era, Chinese politics in Jiang and Hu’s era were greatly institutionalised. While no institutions could effectively constrain Mao, political leaders like Jiang and Hu were constrained by various institutions. Since the 14th Party Congress of 1992, the power transition at the Party Congress had followed a fairly predictable pattern (Table 6.1). Jiang Zemin became top leader at the 14th Party Congress (1992), consolidated his power at the 15th Party Congress (1997) before relinquishing his leadership role to Hu Jintao at the 16th Party Congress (2002). Similarly, Hu Jintao became the top leader at the 16th Party Congress (2002), re-elected at the 17th Party Congress (2007) and handed over his power to Xi Jinping at the 18th Party Congress (2012). Nevertheless, neither the 19th nor the 20th Party Congress installed an heir apparent in the PSC. Such a succession void has increased uncertainties for future power transitions—an issue that is central to the power play that guides Chinese elite politics. The absence of a designated successor has added uncertainty to the CCP’s succession issue. There is hence a need for Xi to use his personal authority to eventually set up a “new normal” for the selection of his successor. It would not necessarily be a smooth process and might be challenged by intense intra-party competition. The “new normal” for power succession may be reset by technocratic standards. All the paramount leaders since 1990s (Jiang, Hu and Xi) received science and engineering education in university, but only Jiang met the strict technocratic requirements of having both S&T academic training and related career experience in specialist positions at functional organisations. Hu and Xi joined political work immediately after they completed their college study. In the future, however, Xi may handpick a real technocrat to be his successor due to his preference over S&T personnel and emphasis on technological self reliance.

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Table 6.1 Party Congresses and Power Succession in the Reform Era Party Congress

Month and year

12th

Number of delegates

Membership of CPC

Elected party leader

Political significance

Sep 1982 1600

39.6 million

Hu Yaobang

It was the first Party Congress in the reform era which consolidated the reform and opening-up policy

13th

Oct 1987 1936

46 million

Zhao Ziyang

Zhao Ziyang was elected as the party secretary; he was preparing for political reforms when they were crushed after the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown

14th

Oct 1992 1989

51 million

Jiang Zemin

It was convened against the backdrop of Deng Xiaoping‘s nanxun (Southern Tour) that called for more aggressive reform. The Congress formally endorsed “socialist market economy” as the ultimate goal of China’s economic reform. It marked the coming of age of the “Third Generation” of leadership headed by Jiang Zemin

15th

Sep 1997 2048

58 million

Jiang Zemin

Deng Xiaoping passed away a few months before the Congress was convened. Jiang Zemin consolidated his power at the Congress

16th

Nov 2002

2114

66 million

Hu Jintao As scheduled, Hu replaced Jiang as Party general secretary, with Jiang’s “Three Represents” enshrined in the Party Constitution. It was the first orderly power transition in the Party history

17th

Oct 2007 2217

71 million

Hu Jintao Hu was reelected as Party general secretary and Xi joined Politburo Standing Committee as heir apparent. Hu’s concept of “Scientific Development” was enshrined in the Party Charter (continued)

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Table 6.1 (continued) Party Congress

Month and year

Number of delegates

Membership of CPC

Elected party leader

Political significance

18th

Nov 2012

2270

85 million

Xi Jinping

In CPC’s second orderly power succession, Xi, as scheduled, replaced Hu as CPC general secretary and chairman of the Central Military Commission

19th

Oct 2017 2287

89 million

Xi Jinping

Xi was reelected as CPC general secretary and Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era was written into the CPC Charter

20th

Oct 2022 2296

96 million

Xi Jinping

Xi was reelected as CPC general secretary. The new developments in Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era since the 19th Party Congress were incorporated into the Party Charter

Source Compiled by the Author

Xi’s preference was evident when he “personally” vetted the selection of the 20th CCP Central Committee members (Xinhua 2022), 39.5% of whom were technocrats (Fig. 4.1). Since April 2022, Xi had personally spoken to 30 senior leaders to seek their opinions and exchanged views with other PSC members, Xinhua (2022) said. At the 20th Party Congress, Xi told delegates that China will “accelerate the implementation of innovation-driven development strategies and accelerate the realisation of high-level scientific and technological self-reliance”. The country will accelerate the “construction of the world’s important talent centre” and strive to “form a comparative advantage of international competition for talents” (Xi 2022). The appointments of technocrats underlined Beijing‘s growing security concern in the face of tensions with the United States and its allies. Technocrats play a pivotal role in building up the Chinese techno-security state. In the 20th Party Congress report, Xi used the term “security” (anquan) 91 times, up from 19th Party Congress’ 55 times in 2017, while his use of the word “reform” declined to 51 from 69. That China was in a “period of strategic opportunity” (zhanlue jiyuqi) was no longer mentioned, expressing the Party’s anxieties about an increasingly volatile world amid the United States’ perception of China as the preeminent threat to US primacy. Neither did he say that “peace and development remain the themes of the era”. Xi emphasised political security, economic, military, technological, cultural and social security, significantly elevating the importance of national security concerns and technological innovation in the country’s overall priorities.

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As the youngest PSC member born in the 1960s, top technocrat Ding Xuexiang has emerged as a likely successor to Premier Li Qiang or even General Secretary Xi. Being the executive vice premier in charge of daily socioeconomic policies in the State Council, Ding is well-positioned to take over the premiership at the National People’s Congress in 2028, when he will be 65 years old. If Xi wants to retire at the next Party Congress scheduled in 2027, Ding may get the chance to replace Xi as the paramount leader. If Xi decides to continue his fourth term till 2032, Ding may be too old to take over the position then, and a younger PSC member will be chosen to be the top leader. It’s still too early to tell whether other Politburo members born in the 1960s will emerge as heir apparent in the next few years. These people include Li Ganjie, Li Shulei, Zhang Guoqing, Chen Jining, Liu Guozhong, Yuan Jiajun, Chen Wenqing and Chen Min’er. Most of these young politburo members are more likely to enter the PSC at the next Party Congress than their peers, with one or two even emerging as potential successors to Xi himself. Among these eight members, five (Li Ganjie, Zhang Guoqing, Chen Jining, Liu Guozhong and Yuan Jiajun) are technocrats with strong S&T backgrounds. As compared to the other three with humanities and social science backgrounds, these five people are more likely to be promoted into the PSC. In particular, Shanghai Party Secretary Chen Jining and Chongqing Party Secretary Yuan Jiajun have an upper hand due to their positions in charge of the two strategically important cities. Chen is a prominent candidate for future paramount leadership, as two of his predecessors, Jiang Zemin and Xi Jinping, succeeded in gaining the top position. The analysis of the incumbent Politburo members indicates the high probability of real technocrats becoming the next CCP general secretary and Chinese premier. Given the fact that the State Council’s leadership has already been dominated by technocrats including Premier Li Qiang, Executive Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang, Vice Premier Liu Guozhong and Zhang Guoqing, China’s development strategy is no doubt in the hands of technocrats, and will continue to be overshadowed by the growing technocracy at the top echelon of power. The State Council led by technocrats with expertise and experiences in military-related and high-tech industries will reshape China’s economic development strategy in the next five to 10 years.

6.3 China’s Military–Industrial-Technological Complex China has for decades invested large amounts of resources into the military industries and has accumulated highly advanced technology in order to be on the level with the United States. Officials from these industries are expected to drive the forces of new engines for the coming decade by applying advanced military technology to civilian fields and integrating the military industry into local economic development. China’s military-industrial-technological complex is in the making in the new context of global geopolitical tensions, with emerging technocratic leaders representing its interest and policy preferences at the top level of leadership.

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The establishment of the new commission overseeing the fusion of military and civilian developments in 2017 accelerated the process of integrating military, civilian and technological industries and thus reinforced the position of the militaryindustrial-technological complex. A widely known adoption of dual-use technologies is the commercialisation of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, which was initiated in 1994 by the China National Space Administration and aimed to end the reliance on the US global positioning system (GPS) operated by the US Air Force. Since 2011 when BeiDou opened the door to the rapidly expanding commercial use of satellite navigation, more buses, ships, smartphones and bike sharers within China have been using the Beidou navigation services. Another military and civilian fusion case is the development of China’s supercomputers, which achieved the speed that can train an artificial intelligence program with 174 trillion parameters, rivalling the synapses in the human brain (South China Morning Post 2022). China for years have dominated the number of supercomputers on the Top500 list, possessing some of the world’s most powerful supercomputers. Chinese supercomputers Sunway TaihuLight, developed by China’s National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering & Technology and installed at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi city, ranked at the fourth position with 93 Pflop/s on the list in 2021. Tianhe-2A, a system developed by China’s National University of Defense Technology and deployed at the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou city, was listed as the No. 7 system with 61.4 Pflop/ s in that year (Top500 2021). Now China has stopped submitting information to the TOP500 for its leading systems, including the several exascale-class systems the country is believed to have. The civilian–military integration, however, does not necessarily warrant the promotion of personnel from such areas as high technology, aerospace and military expertise to the top echelon, since most of them lack expertise in critical postindustrial problems relating to health care, ageing, social security, environmental protection and foreign affairs. Some of them, in order to be selected as front runners for the Chinese leadership, have to demonstrate capabilities of handling tough governance challenges beyond the military realm. The career patterns of technocrats like Yuan Jiajun, Zhang Guoqing and Ma Xingrui indicates that officials with S&T backgrounds still need provincial governance experiences before they are promoted to the key positions at the central level. Xi’s effort to increase the integration between the military and industry shows Beijing‘s determination to shake up the country’s bureaucratic and antiquated weapons production system. Nevertheless, technological sanctions from the United States and its allies, interest groups in China’s defence industry and insufficiency of indigenous innovations will be key obstacles to China’s nurturing of defence manufacturers that are regarded comparable to the likes of Lockheed Martin or Boeing in the United States. As more technocrats from the military–industrial-technological complex are taking key positions in the Chinese government, China’s foreign policy will become increasingly assertive while its development strategy will be focusing more on selfreliance (Chap. 5). In May 2020 the CCP Politburo raised the “dual circulation”

6.3 China’s Military–Industrial-Technological Complex

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strategy, which involved expanding domestic demand, focusing on the domestic market, improving the country’s capacity for innovation, reducing dependence on foreign markets, and at the same time remaining open to the outside world. This is the first time that domestic demand and capacities have been so explicitly enshrined in state policy as the dominant driver for the Chinese economy since the reform and opening-up period in the late 1970s. The CCP’s shift to the “dual circulation” paradigm has important implications for regional development in China. As China’s dual-circulation strategy that stresses “domestic circulation” over “international circulation” becomes new road map of growth, domestic consumption and hinterland development, which helps China to rely less on the external world, are boosted by the central government’s favourable policies in the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021–2025) and beyond. Technocrats from the military–industrial-technological complex will consolidate such policy preference by pushing the central government to tilt towards western and central Chinese provinces, where the CCP leadership once placed enormous industrial capacity during the Cold War period. In the mid-1960s Mao’s leadership launched the “Third Front” construction programme (1964–1980) for war preparedness through massive investment in defence, technology, industries, transport and other infrastructure projects into China’s hinterland. Such “Maoist development strategy” had a profound impact on the country’s industrial layout and urban–rural relation (Tan et al. 2021). The post-Mao Chinese leadership in the early 1970s reversed the Maoist model and adopted a new development strategy called the “uneven development strategy” (Yang 1990), represents another attempt to bring China out of economic backwardness. Focusing on economic results, the new strategy emphasizes regional comparative advantage, accepts regional disparities as inevitable, encourages foreign investment and international interaction, and seeks to foster technological innovation. Post-Mao central government policies have favoured the coastal region more than the interior. During this period, the CCP prioritized the development of the coastal region first as being in the national interest and believed that the coastal development would serve as a catalyst in the modernization of the whole country. Comparative advantage was the central concept in post-Mao regional development. The “uneven development strategy” was clearly efficiency oriented, and gradually evolved into a coast-oriented one in a couple of years. The central government helped the coastal region surge ahead of others and allowed it to become internationally competitive. The regional disparity between the coastal provinces and the inland ones was increased as a result, bringing about unintended political, economic and social challenges. For the sakes of national security and balanced regional development, powerful technocrats these days are trying to replace the “uneven development strategy” with the “Maoist development strategy.” Since many of them were directly involved in strategic projects located in inland provinces, they are prone to promote interiororiented investments and development. As discussed in Chap. 2, China’s techno-security strategy today is actually the continuation of the techno-national development doctrine in Mao’s era that rationalised expensive strategic weapons efforts with an organizational style that strategic

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weapons leaders were promoted as the essential complement of the doctrine. Such techno-national strategy has been driven by the CCP leadership’s zest in industrial modernisation, and anxiety over the technological gap between the United States and China. Under the technology-security ideology, indigenization thus became the critical element in China’s military and economic development. It’s almost impossible for technocrats nurtured in such environment to accept coastal-oriented development model based on economic efficiency. As compared to typical bureaucrats, technocrats usually have technological knowhow, and are meant to be goal-oriented, to possess essential problem-solving skills and capacity of making tough decisions. As Xi himself does not have a strong factional background, he tends to promote technocrats with certain detachment from factional politics, which may lead them to have greater loyalty to the top leadership. Most technocrats tend to support Xi’s Maoist governance that keeps tightening limits to discussions of ideas such as democracy and freedom of speech. Technocrats are not interested in public policy debates, where a range of views is allowed, and are meticulous about the implementation of policies from Xi’s leadership. The rise of technocrats in modern times derives from the reality that skills in and knowledge of planning and organising in economic, social, military, science and technology fields have become essential for national competitiveness. The growing number of university graduates among the CCP elites in the reform era can partially be attributed to rising educational qualifications among the population at large. In 2022, a record high of 10.8 million students graduated from Chinese higher education institutions, an increase of 60% from 10 years ago. In an authoritarian state ruled by a single party, technocrats are more likely to reach powerful positions as they do not need to compete with professional politicians for votes from the public. It is often argued that technocracy is mainly distinguished by its absence of ideological commitment, but in reality, its ideology is deeply rooted in and grounded upon meritocracy in society. In the long run, the enhancement of technocracy in Chinese politics could lead to a more realistic outlook on international relations among the CCP elites, who will reinforce their belief in the crucial role of applied science and technology in determining regime strength and economic competitiveness.

6.4 Security Dilemma The growing technocracy in the Chinese leadership is closely linked with China’s innovation-driven strategy focusing on national economic development coordinated with military and security goals. Technocrats are devoted to the built-up of technosecurity state that integrates the domestic and external security arenas and emphasises the strengthening of military and security powers. They are accentuating the militarycivil fusion strategy that seeks to integrate the compartmentalised civilian and defence

6.4 Security Dilemma

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portions of the Chinese economy into a seamless, cohesive dual-use system better able to cater to the needs of the military and national security apparatuses (Cheung 2022). Such security strengthening effort, however, will produce unintended consequences and lead to intensified security dilemma in East Asia and the world. Technocrats’ vision of building a strong, vibrant and technologically advanced economy and defence apparatus may further stoke the “China threat theory,” which refers to fatalistic narratives and speculations about the world’s future that are fuelled by anxiety, uncertainty, and fear in response to China’s rise (Akgül and Renda 2020). Assuming that China cannot and will not rise peacefully, the China threat theory predicts that it will use its economic, technological and military power to subvert the West and the current world order. It suggests the West must restrict China’s rise to prevent serious global consequences. In such a tragical security dilemma, even if China has benign intent, its coordinated innovation and modernisation effort led by technocrats will cause uncertainty, suspicion and even hostility in the international arena. As a revisionist state, China’s rise directly challenges the hegemonic position of the United States as a status quo power. This has led to escalating arms race between the two superpowers, both of which try to prove that they have the capability to defeat the other. If either state believes that it might be taken advantage of during a period of temporary weakness (a window of opportunity) it may initiate a preventive or pre-emptive war. In this scenario, since both are prepared to wage a preventive or preemptive war both harbour malign intent (Collins 2000). Lack of mutual communications or trust will reinforce the security dilemma by spiralling up the hostility between them. Neighbours are also unsure about China’s strategic intentions in the region, fearing that China’s techno-security build-up will infringe their national security. The lack of transparency and political trust among East Asian powers has created an atmosphere of uncertainty over various territorial disputes, many of which involve China. These countries’ security needs for self-reliance paradoxically have fuelled the arms buildup and generated mutual fear and suspicion. China’s relationship with Southeast Asian countries, Japan, Korea, India and the self-ruled Taiwan, which China views as a breakaway province, can be examined through the lens of security dilemma. Their distrust, suspicion and even fear about Chinese intentions are on the rise when China’s techno-security power is growing unchecked. Most governments are adopting the combination of containment and engagement, which is epitomised by their diplomatic and military ties with the United States to balance China. Most Chinese policy makers, however, do not accept the mutual security notion that one country’s sown security is assured only when other states also feel secure. Rather, most still seem to believe that China is more secure if other states are weaker and thus less secure (Garrett and Glaser 1995). China’s rapid economic, technological and military ascent has been motivated by its historical experiences, most notably those of the 19th and early twentieth centuries, known to the Chinese as the Century of Humiliation, when China lost some of its territory and its prestige to the imperial

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powers of the day. The ambitious Made in China 2025 plan, which was pushed by aspiring technocrats and aimed at building top-notch manufacturing capabilities, was to a large extent driven by the Chinese people’s collective trauma of the semi-colonial past and the “never again” mentality (Tischler 2020). With the help of new technocrats in the leadership, Xi in his third term is accelerating the efforts to optimize and align every step of the innovation process. The State Council has become a technocratic cabinet led by an unprecedented number of officials with S&T expertise. These technocrats are familiar with China’s hierarchical innovation system, and good at coordination and control of project-based funding programs. Yet the harder the technocratic leadership is pushing the country to become an S&T superpower, the more likely China is stuck in the security dilemma with the United States and neighbouring countries. Chinese researchers are under enormous pressure to contribute to the country’s pursuit of technological self-sufficiency and core tech leadership, which have shrunk the space for collaboration with foreign partners. As China’s government looks to extract more commercial value out of its research spending, European stakeholders face the growing risk of unwanted technology transfer (MERICS 2023). The U.S. Department of Defense (2022) has identified China as the only competitor with the intent and, increasingly, the capacity to reshape the international order. It remains wary of China’s military-civil fusion development strategy that “includes objectives to develop and acquire advanced dual-use technology for military purposes and to deepen reform of the national defense science and technology industries, and serves a broader purpose to strengthen all of the PRC‘s instruments of national power.” Beijing‘s military-civil fusion strategy aimed at enhancing its own national security is now causing sense of insecurity from the U.S. side, which will expand its defence budget accordingly to cope with the China threat. The U.S. securityenhancing moves in turn will increase China’s security anxieties and accelerate the arms race between them. The promotion of technocrats serves China’s long-term goal of creating an entirely self-reliant defense-industrial sector fused with a strong civilian industrial and technology sector. To achieve that goal, Xi has nominated cadres based on their technical expertise outside of the political circles, and these have been referred to as new technocrats. These days, the leadership has been promoting technocrats with expertise and experiences in military-related and strategically important tech industries like aerospace, aviation, nuclear, ordnance, computer, biochemistry, telecommunications and environmental engineering. The growing number of technocrats from militaryrelated S&T departments indicates that China’s industrial society today still takes on the features of the mobilised society/preparedness economy in the Mao era, which ties people’s socioeconomic life to military and war preparedness.

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Index

A Aeronautics, 15, 31, 34, 41, 43, 46 Aerospace, 2, 11–15, 22, 24, 25, 32–34, 40–44, 46, 50, 60, 61, 66–68, 75, 80, 86, 88, 95, 96, 98, 101, 106, 110 Age limit, 64, 65, 100 Alberto Fujimori, 5 Alberto Lleras Camargo, 5 All-China Federation of Trade Unions, 44, 73 All-China Women’s Association, 73 Anthony Fauci, 4 Artificial intelligence, 11, 15, 22, 40, 96, 106 Asian financial crisis, 76 AsiaSat 1 satellite, 42 Atomic bombs, 21 Authoritarian resilience, 57, 96 Aviation Industry Corporation of China, 43

B Baicheng Weapons Test Centre, 79 Balance-of-power, 15, 29, 56, 57 Bandwagoning, 56, 58, 72 BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, 35, 49, 106 Beihang University (Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics), 67 Beijing, 11, 27, 29, 34, 35, 37, 40, 41, 43–45, 49, 52, 60, 65, 66, 75, 79, 82, 85, 86, 90, 92, 99, 104, 106, 110 Beijing Command Centre, 79

Beijing Institute of Chemical Engineering, 27 Beijing Institute of Technology, 34 Beijing Radio and Television University, 42 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), 85 Biochemical science, 15, 40 Black swan, 48, 87 Boeing, 35, 50, 82, 106 Brazil, 5 Britain, 63 Brunel University London, 45, 61 Bureau of Military Equipment and Technology Cooperation, 79

C C919, 33, 41, 49, 50 Career advancement, 2, 12, 15, 52, 58, 61, 63, 64, 99–101 Carlos Lleras Restrepo, 5 CATIC Computer Corp., 81 CATIC Industries Corp., 81 CEIEC International Economic Cooperation Company, 80 CEIEC International Electronics Service Corp., 80 CEIEC Kaiyuan, 80 CEIEC Oriental Trading Company, 80 Central Leading Group - Central Leading Group on Comprehensively Deepening Reforms, 88 Central Military Commission (CMC)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 G. Chen, Political Implications of China’s Technocracy in the Reform Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-2977-1

113

114 - Equipment Development Department, 33, 67, 79 -Joint Staff Department, 79 -Political Work Department, 79 Central S&T Commission, 83, 99 Century of Humiliation, 109 Changchun University of Science and Technology, 44 Chang’e Program, 12, 32 Changsha, 33, 42, 101 Chengdu, 43, 79, 85 Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle, 84, 85 Cheng Fubo, 43 Chen Jining, 2, 12, 38–40, 46, 59, 61–63, 65, 66, 105 Chen Liangyu, 66 Chen Min’er, 105 Chen Qiufa, 32, 41, 42 Chen Quanguo, 30, 31 Chen Wenqing, 40, 65, 105 Chen Xi, 30, 31, 61, 62, 90, 100 Chen Yonggui, 20 Chen Yuan, 28, 29 Chen Wenqing, 39 Chile, 5 China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, 42 China Aerodynamics R&D, 79 China Aeronautical Projects Contracting and Development Corp., 81 China Aerospace Corporation (CASC), 41, 42, 50, 78, 81 China Aerospace Machinery and Electronics Corp., 80 China Aerospace Mechanical and Electrical Corporation, 101 China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC), 43, 50 China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), 33, 41, 42, 60 China Anda Aviation, 79 China Anhua Development Corp., 79 China Association of Peaceful Use of Military Industrial Technology, 80 China Atomic Energy Authority, 41, 60 China Aviation Industry Civil Products Corp., 81 China Aviation Industry Supply and Marketing Corp., 81 China Baoyuan Industry and Trade Company, 80 China Central Television, 43

Index China Electronics International Exhibition and Advertising Corp., 80 China Electronics Materials Corp., 80 China Electronic Systems Engineering Company, 79 China General Industrial Material and Equipment Supply Corp., 80 China Great Wall Industry Group, 80, 81 China-India borders, 92 China Isotope Corp., 80 China Jingan Equipment Import-export Corp., 79 China National Aero-Engine Corp., 81 China National Aero-Equipment Corp., 81 China National Aero-Technology Import-Export Corp. Group, 81 China National Aero-Technology International Engineering Corp., 81 China National Electronics Import-Export Corp. (CEIEC), 80 China National Helicopter Corp., 81 China National Nuclear Corporation, 80 China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), 24 China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), 24 China National Precision Machinery Import and Export Corp., 80, 81 China National Space Administration, 35, 41–43, 60, 106 China North Chemical Industries Corp., 80 China North Industries Corporation, 44, 60, 80, 81 China North Optics and Electronics Corp., 80 China Nuclear Energy Industry Corp., 80 China Nuclear Equipment and Materials Corporation, 80 China Nuclear Instrument and Equipment Corp., 80 China Offshore Industrial Corp., 80, 81 China Rainbow International Corp., 80 China Shipbuilding Trading Company, 80, 81 China’s National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering & Technology, 106 China State Shipbuilding Corp., 80, 81 China threat theory, 109 China Tianlong Enterprises Corp., 79 China United Airlines, 79 China United Shipbuilding Company, 80, 81

Index China Xiaofeng Technology and Equipment Corporation, 80 China Yanxing National Corp., 80 China Yuanwang Corporation, 80 China Zhihua Corporation, 79 China Zhongyuan Foreign Engineering Corp., 80 Chinese Academy of Engineering, 22 Chinese Academy of Space Technology, 60 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) - Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, 39 - Central Committee - plenum, 33, 51 - Central Disciplinary Inspection Commission, 67 - Central Organization Department, 61, 62, 65 - Central Party School, 67 - Central Policy Research Office, 33, 67 - Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, 27, 39, 65, 66 - Central Propaganda Department, 65–67, 39 - Central Secretariat, 27, 39, 40 - Central United Front Work Department, 39 - General Office, 67 - International Liaison Department, 67 - Party Congress, 2, 30, 37, 38, 62 - Politburo, 39, 61, 66, 83, 106 - Politburo Standing Committee (PSC), 2, 24, 39, 95 Chinese Communist Youth League (CCYL), 29, 32, 33, 57, 58, 64–66, 71–73, 100, 101 Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), 22, 27, 37–39 Chongqing, 29, 41, 44, 65, 66, 85, 105 Civil service, 10, 20, 96 Climate change, 3, 45, 87 Cold War, 1, 6, 20, 21, 27, 95, 107 Commission for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, 42, 43 Concept of scientific development, 8 Confucius, 10, 26 Corruption Perceptions Index, 72 Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, 33, 67 COVID-19, 4, 45, 48, 66, 87, 98 Crisis management, 4, 87 Cultural Revolution, 19, 20, 27, 56

115 D Dazhai brigade, 20 Deng Jiaxian, 21 Deng Xiaoping, 2, 8, 11, 14, 15, 19, 23, 27, 56, 57, 76, 102, 103 Depoliticisation, 3 Détente, 6 Ding Henggao, 41 Ding Xuexiang, 7, 12, 15, 30, 31, 37–39, 58, 59, 65, 83, 90, 100, 105 Domestic circulation, 48, 83, 98, 107 Dongbei Jincheng Industrial Corp., 79 Dual circulation, 48, 83, 85, 86, 98, 106, 107 Dwight Eisenhower, 32, 75

E East Asia, 16, 91, 92, 95, 109 Econocrats, 3, 30 Eighth Routh Army, 76 Elite politics, 2, 12, 14, 15, 19, 24, 26, 30, 55–57, 74, 96, 99, 101, 102 Eurasia, 85 European Union, 3 “Expert vs. red”, 16, 71

F FBC-1 fighter-bomber, 42 Five-Year Plan (FYP), 48, 68, 83, 97, 98, 107 Four Modernisations, 23 France, 44, 60, 63 Fujian province, 45, 52, 100 Fu Linguo, 77

G 5G, 15, 40, 49 Gansu province, 43 Gao Gang, 19, 20 German Academy of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 60 German Aerospace Center, 41 Global financial crisis, 3, 88 Global Positioning System (GPS), 35, 106 Global Value Chain (GVC), 98 Global Innovation Index, 49 Gray rhino, 48 Great Wall Industry Corp, 78, 80 Greenhouse gas, 45 Gross domestic product (GDP), 11, 78, 87, 97

116 Guangdong, 32, 41–43, 60, 66, 86 Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area, 84, 86 Gu Junshan, 77 Guo Shengkun, 30, 31 Gustav Husak, 23

H Hainan province - Free Trade Port, 86 Han Zheng, 38, 83 Hao Peng, 32, 43 Harbin Engineering University, 34 Harbin Institute of Technology, 2, 34, 40–42, 44, 60, 63 Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 45, 60, 63 Hebei province, 42, 44 Heilongjiang, 32, 42, 44, 60 He Junke, 32, 33, 101 Henan, 43, 87 Hengyang Steel Pipe Factory, 66 Henri de Saint-Simon, 1 He Lifeng, 39, 67, 83 He Weidong, 39 Hobbesian, 91 Hong Kong, 49, 86 Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 63 Howard Scott, 1 Huabei Jinghai Enterprise Corp., 79 Huadong Institute of Engineering, 33 Huai Jinpeng, 67 Hua Jianmin, 28, 29 Huandong Enterprises Corp., 79 Huang Ju, 27, 28, 66 Huang Kunming, 31 Huang Qiang, 43 Huazhong University of Science and Technology, 34 Hu Chunhua, 33, 58, 64, 71 Hughes, 42 Hu Henghua, 66 Huitong Corp., 79 Hu Jintao, 2, 8, 14, 19, 25, 26, 28, 29, 33, 38, 40, 41, 46, 47, 57, 58, 64, 68, 71, 72, 84, 102, 103 Hunan, 29, 32, 33, 42, 43, 51, 66, 75, 101 Hu Qili, 2, 23, 24, 95 Hu Yaobang, 57, 64, 74, 102, 103 Hydrogen bombs, 21

Index I Imperial College London, 2, 40, 45, 61, 63 Income tax, 84 India, 109 Industrial democracy, 1 Industrialism, 1 Information technology, 15, 40–42, 60, 67 Inner-party democracy, 57, 96 Institutionalisation, 56, 57, 102 Institutionalism, 97 International circulation, 48, 83, 98, 107 International relations theory, 91 Intra-Party democracy, 96

J Jia Chunwang, 28, 29 Jiang Jiemin, 24 Jiang Jinquan, 33, 34 Jiangnan Space Corp., 80 Jiang Zemin, 2, 8, 11, 14, 19, 22–26, 29, 38, 40, 41, 57, 58, 66, 68, 72, 76, 78, 95, 102, 103, 105 Jiaolong, 49 Jia Qinglin, 27 Jilin University, 27 Jin Zhuanglong, 33 Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre, 79

K Kaili Group, 78 Korea, 109 Korean War, 21 Kuomintang (KMT), 6

L Lantian Corp., 79 Lan Tianli, 33, 34 Lanzhou, 43, 79 Latin America, 3, 5 Leninist, 7, 47, 73, 87, 88 Liaoning, 32, 43, 44 Liberal-democrat regimes, 97 Li Changchun, 27 Li Ganjie, 2, 38–40, 44–46, 59–61, 63, 65, 74, 105 Li Hongzhong, 31, 39 Li Keqiang, 28, 33, 37, 38, 71, 83 Lin Biao, 55, 56, 76, 102 Ling Jihua, 72, 73 Li Peng, 2, 22–24, 95

Index Li Qiang, 7, 15, 30, 31, 37–40, 45, 58, 59, 63, 65, 66, 83, 99, 100, 105 Li Shangfu, 33, 67, 77, 85 Li Shulei, 38, 39, 65, 67, 105 Li Tielin, 28, 29 Liu Guozhong, 2, 7, 33, 40, 44, 59, 60, 63, 65, 83, 86, 105 Liu Shaoqi, 55, 56, 102 Liu Yandong, 27–29 Liu Zheng, 77 Liu Guozhong, 39 Liu Yushan, 38 Li Xi, 37–39 Li Yuanchao, 57 Li Zhanshu, 38 Lockheed Martin, 35, 50, 82, 106 Long March rocket, 33, 42 Luo Gan, 27 M Macau, 86 Made in China 2025, 110 Mao (Zedong) -Mao Zedong Thought, 8, 40 Market steerage, 90 Mars, 41, 60 Marxist, 4, 31, 58, 63 Master of Business Administration (MBA), 31, 58, 63 Master of Public Administration (MPA), 31 Ma Xingrui, 2, 32, 33, 39–41, 44, 50, 59, 60, 62, 63, 74, 86, 101, 106 Max Weber, 9 Micius, 49 Middle East, 44, 60, 63, 81 Middle Income Trap (MIT), 32 Military and Civilian Fusion (MCF), 12, 13, 50, 106 Military Area Commands, 76 Military– Industrial Complex (MIC), 12, 13, 15, 32, 34, 71, 73, 75, 77, 78, 82, 90, 91 Military-industrial-technological complex, 105, 106 Moscow, 22 N Nanfang Industrial and Trading Corp., 79 Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 34 Nanjing University of Science and Technology, 34, 60

117 Nanxun (Southern Tour), 103 National Higher Education Entrance Examination (gaokao), 27 National Key Technologies Program, 49 National Major Scientific Research Program, 49 National Nuclear Safety Administration, 2, 40, 44, 60 National People’s Congress (NPC), 27, 38, 39, 45, 65, 83, 98, 99, 105 National Supercomputing Center, 106 National University of Defense Technology, 33, 42, 67, 101, 106 New normal, 11, 74, 85, 102 Nie Rongzhen, 21 Ningxia, 41 Nomenklatura, 7, 8, 61, 62, 89 Northeast Jincheng Enterprises Group, 79 North-east Military Region, 19 Northwestern Polytechnical University, 34, 42, 43 Northwest Industrial and Trading Corp., 79 Northwest Nuclear Test Base, 79 Nuclear, 2, 9, 12, 14, 21, 40, 44, 46, 47, 60, 91, 110 O Overall national security concept, 47, 51 P Pandemic, 3, 4, 45, 48, 66, 84, 87, 97, 98 Party building, 7, 73 Peking University, 24, 28 Peng Dehuai, 19 People’s Armed Police (PAP), 77, 79 People’s Liberation Army (PLA) -Air Force, 79 -General Armaments Department (GAD), 77 -General Logistics Department (GLD), 77 -Joint Logistics Support Force, 79 -Military Regions, 79 -Navy, 79 -Railway Force, 67 -Rocket Force, 79 -Strategic Support Force, 67 People’s Republic of China (PRC), 4, 6, 10, 11, 14, 15, 19–22, 25, 30, 57, 65, 71, 74, 96, 97, 102, 110 Period of strategic opportunity, 47, 104 Pinghe Electronics Company, 79

118 Plan for the Rise of the Central Region, 84 Poly Goup, 78 Post-industrial, 10, 11, 13, 30, 34, 78, 91, 96, 106 Preparedness economy, 13, 34, 91, 110 “863” programme, 24, 49 973 program, 49 Public health, 2, 11, 15, 40, 45, 46, 60, 66 Purdue University, 21

Q Qian Xuesen, 22, 41 Qin Gang, 38 Qinghai province, 43

R Rao Shushi, 20 Red Army, 67, 76 Red Guards, 20 Reform and opening up, 6, 23 Research and development (R&D), 8, 11, 13, 15, 25, 43, 49, 50, 52, 53, 68, 72, 77, 83, 98, 100 Revitalization Plan for the North-eastern Region, 84, 85 Revolving door, 62 Romania, 73 Russia, 33, 67 Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, 60, 63

S S-400 surface-to-air missile, 33, 67 Samuel P. Huntington, 11 Sanjiang Space Group, 80 San Jiu Group, 78 Sany Heavy Industry group, 75 Science and technology (S&T), 2–4, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13–16, 19, 21–26, 32, 34, 35, 48–53, 58, 60, 63, 65, 67, 68, 71–75, 83, 86, 90, 91, 95, 96, 98, 99, 101, 102, 105, 106, 108, 110 Second Medical University of Shanghai, 45 Security dilemma, 16, 91, 92, 95, 108–110 Self-reliance, 5, 7, 8, 20, 22, 24, 46, 48, 67, 68, 76, 83, 85, 86, 98, 99, 102, 104, 106, 109 Semashko Research Institute of Social Hygiene, Economics and Public Health Management, 60 Senkaku (diaoyudao) Islands, 92

Index Shaanxi, 29, 33, 38, 43, 44, 52, 65, 74 Shaanxi Liangnan Corp., 80 Shandong Dongyue Industrial Corp., 79 Shandong Medical College, 45 Shanghai, 20, 28, 29, 38, 45, 46, 52, 57, 58, 65, 66, 74, 83, 100, 105 Shanghai Jiaotong University, 45 Shanghai Maritime Space Measurement Ship Base, 79 Shanghai Research Institute of Materials, 59, 65 Shanhaidan Enterprises Group Corp., 79 Shanxi, 72 Shen Xiaoming, 45, 66 Shenzhou Program, 12, 32, 42 Shijian 5 satellite project, 41, 60 Shi Taifeng, 39 Sichuan Aerospace Corp., 80 Sino Satellite Communications Company, 60 Sino-Vietnamese War, 38, 65 Socialist market economy, 103 Songhai Corp., 79 South Asia, 85 Southeast Asia, 85 Southern Industry and Trade General Corp., 79 Southwest Great Wall Economic Development General Corp., 79 Soviet Union, 19, 22, 24, 45 Spratly Islands, 92 Stalin Automobile Works, 22 State Council - China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, 99 - China National Space Administration, 35, 41–43, 60, 106 - China Securities Regulatory Commission, 99 - Ministry of Aerospace Industry, 41, 42, 63 - Ministry of Ecological Environment, 45 - Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, 34, 80 - Ministry of Science and Technology, 66, 99 - National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) - National Data Bureau, 99 - National Financial Regulatory Administration, 99 - People’s Bank of China, 99

Index - State Drug Administration, 45 - State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, 32, 42 State-owned enterprises (SOEs), 15, 40, 46, 50, 51, 61, 62, 75, 82, 86–89 State Security Council, 75 State Supervision Commission, 73 Strategic weapons, 12, 14, 21–24, 95, 107, 108 Su-35, 33, 67 Sun Chunlan, 30, 31 Sunway TaihuLight, 106 Supercomputer, 106 Su Shulin, 24

T Taiwan, 6, 75, 92, 109 Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre, 79 1,000-Talents Scheme, 49 Targeted Poverty Alleviation, 85 Taylorist, 9 Technocracy, 1–4, 6, 7, 9–16, 19, 23, 26–28, 30, 32, 34, 35, 51, 52, 55, 58, 59, 64, 68, 72, 74, 90, 91, 95, 96, 98, 101, 105, 108 Technonationalism, 9, 22 Techno-security, 5, 7, 12, 13, 15, 46, 48, 50, 89–92, 104, 107–109 Tehran, 44 Telecommunications, 11, 12, 34, 50, 78, 87, 88, 95, 96, 110 Term limit, 64, 65, 100, 101 Third Front, 107 Thorstein Veblen, 3 Three Represents, 8, 103 Tiananmen, 14, 25, 26, 57, 72, 103 Tiancheng Corp., 79 Tiangong II space lab, 49 Tianhe-2A, 106 Tianjin, 29, 32, 44, 66 Tianma (Sky Horse) Enterprises, 79 Tianyan, 49 Tibet, 43 Transparency International, 72 Tsinghua University, 27, 28, 44, 45, 52, 60–63, 66, 74, 100

U United States, The - Department of Commerce, 90 - Department of Defense, 6, 92, 110

119 - U.S. 2022 National Security Strategy, The, 6 - U.S. House of Representatives, The, 6 - White House, 4 University of Michigan, 21

V Vanuatu, 73 2035 Vision, 97

W Walter Rathenau, 3 Wang Hongwen, 20 Wang Huning, 33, 37, 38, 57, 58 Wang Ming, 55 Wang Qishan, 38 Wang Shucheng, 28, 29 Wang Weizhong, 66 Wang Xiaohong, 40 Wang Yang, 30, 31, 37, 38, 71 Wang Yi, 38, 39, 65, 67 Wang Yong, 32, 41, 42 Wang Zhigang, 32 Wankun Development Ltd., 79 Wehrwirtschaft, 13, 34, 91 Wen Jiabao, 26, 84 Wenzhou Medical College, 45 Western Development Strategy (WDS), 84, 85 William Henry Smyth, 1 Winner-takes-all, 15, 16, 55–58, 72 Wolf warrior, 38 World War II, 3 Wu Bangguo, 27–29, 66 Wu Guanzheng, 27–29 Wukong, 49 Wuxi city, 106

X Xi’an, 34, 85 Xichang Satellite Launch Centre, 42, 67, 79 Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology, 66 Xie Zhenhua, 28, 29 Xi Jinping - Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, 8, 40 Xinhai Corp., 79 Xinhua News Agency, 38 Xinjiang, 32, 42, 66

120 Xin Shidai Company, 78 Xin Xing Group, 78 Xiongan, 86 Xi Jinping - Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, 104 Xu Dazhe, 32, 41, 42, 50, 51

Y Yangtze River Delta, 84, 86 Yang Xiaodu, 30, 31 Yingji-18, 50 Yin Li, 2, 39, 40, 45, 46, 59, 60, 63, 65, 66, 85 Yuan Jiajun, 2, 32, 33, 39–41, 50, 59, 60, 62, 63, 65, 66, 74, 86, 101, 105, 106 Yunnan Space Group, 80 Yu Qiuli, 24 Yu Zhengsheng, 38, 66

Index Z Zeng Qinghong, 24, 27, 29, 57 Zhang Dejiang, 38 Zhang Delin, 28, 29 Zhang Gaoli, 24, 38 Zhang Guoqing, 2, 7, 32, 33, 38–41, 44, 59, 60, 63, 65, 74, 77, 81, 83, 86, 105, 106 Zhang Hongwen, 43, 50, 51 Zhang Qingwei, 32, 33, 41, 42, 50 Zhang Youxia, 38, 65 Zhao Leji, 37, 38 Zhao Ziyang, 74, 102, 103 Zhejiang, 27, 29, 32, 38, 41, 52, 66, 74, 86, 100 Zhou Guotai, 77 Zhou Xiaochuan, 27 Zhou Yongkang, 24, 72, 73 Zhu Guangya, 21 Zhu Rongji, 28, 40, 66 Zou Jiahua, 22