Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard

Institutional Reform and the Bianzhi System in China

The article addresses the important issue of the bianzhi system and the role this system plays in governing China at the central and the local level. In making a critical distinction between nomenklatura and bianzhi , loosely translated as “establishment of posts,” the article provides a new perspective on key issues and concepts in the Chinese administrative reform process. The ultimate aim of the process is to create a leaner and more efficient public sector by shedding non-essential functions and by downsizing the bureaucracy. Two cases are used as illustrations of the issues and problems involved. The first is a discussion of central-level reform with a special emphasis on the reorganization of the Ministry of Personnel in 1998. The second is an analysis of local reform with a focus on the experiment of “small government, big society” in Hainan province. Both cases illustrate the difficulties in sustaining administrative reform. Discarded public administrative functions tend to re-emerge, displaced bureaucrats will seek to return to their former position and the Party is reluctant to allow the creation of better public administration at the expense of Party control.

Politics and Business Group Formation in China: The Party in Control?

As a result of economic reform and administrative restructuring in China, a number of powerful state-owned business groups (“national champions”) have emerged within sectors of strategic importance. They are headed by a new corporate elite which enjoys unprecedentedly high levels of remuneration and managerial independence from government agencies and which derives legitimacy from symbolizing Chinas economic rise. However, through the nomenklatura system, the Party controls the appointment of the CEOs and presidents of the most important of these enterprises and manages a cadre transfer system which makes it possible to transfer/rotate business leaders to take up positions in state and Party agencies. In order to conceptualize the coexistence of the contradicting forces for further enterprise autonomy and continued central control that characterizes the evolving relationship between business groups and the Party-state, this paper proposes the notion of integrated fragmentation.

Redefining Beijing Consensus: ten economic principles

We argue that, owing to the conspicuous failure of Washington Consensus-guided reforms in most parts of the developing world in the 1990s and the outbreak of the current global financial crisis, the Washington Consensus, as a general term of neoliberal free market economic thinking, has been withering. In the meantime, the Chinese economic model has gained wide recognition and praise worldwide. Joshua C. Ramo coined the term ‘Beijing Consensus’ as an alternative approach to economic development for developing nations. There has been hot debate on the notion of a Beijing Consensus. We argue that even though there are some problems in Ramos original definition of Beijing Consensus, we should not reject this notion altogether. Instead, we should try to come up with better conceptualizations of this term. In this paper, we sum up 10 general principles of the Chinese development model as our new definition of the Beijing Consensus.

Key Points of China’s Economic Programme after the Third Plenum of the CPC

At the Third Plenum held in November 2013, the Communist Party of China (CPC) adopted a comprehensive reform programme containing no less than 300 reform proposals. It is potentially the most important reform document to have been passed by the CPC since the landmark Third Plenum in December 1978. Entitled ‘The Decision of the CPC Central Committee on Some Important Questions Concerning Comprehensively Deepening Reform’, the programme upgrades the role of the market in the general economic system from ‘basic’ to ‘decisive’. It also stipulates a number of reform measures within finance, banking, tax, real estate, hukou, urbanisation, government administration, family planning, etc., and establishes two new important leading bodies. One is The Central Leading Group on Comprehensively Deepening Reform and the other is the National Security Council. Xi Jinping is named chairman of both of these new powerful institutions. This indicates his increasingly dominant role in Chinese politics. The reform programme aims to create a more open and market-regulated Chinese economy by 2020, although without dismantling the guiding role of the state-owned economy. The article argues that implementation of the new ambitious goals will be met by resistance from entrenched vested interests. In the state-owned enterprise (SOE) sector powerful actors and interests will try to preserve the status quo. Some private investment will be allowed in publicly-owned entities in order to create enterprises characterised by mixed ownership. However, in key sectors of the economy SOEs will still enjoy a monopoly and will not be exposed to free market competition.

China’s Communist Party: From Mass to Elite Party

The Communist Party of China (CPC) is not withering away as predicted by some Western scholars. On the contrary, in recent years, the party has centralised and strengthened its rule over China. At the same time, party membership has changed. Today, workers and farmers only account for only one-third of the total party membership compared to two-thirds when the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was established. Instead, new strata and groups such as technical and management personnel have evolved. The composition of the party’s cadre corps has changed accordingly, and cadres today are younger and much better educated than during Mao’s time. The leading cadres form an elite which is at the heart of a ranking-stratified political and social system. This article discusses how the CPC has evolved from a mass to an elite party. It argues that in this process, the party has taken over the state resulting in a merger and overlap of party and government positions and functions, thereby abandoning Deng Xiaoping’s ambidextrous policy goals of separating party and government. Centralisation and reassertion of ranking-stratified party rule is Xi Jinping’s answer to the huge challenges caused by the economic and social transformation of Chinese society—not a return to Mao’s mass party.

Market Allocation and Enterprise Reform in the Primary Stage of Capitalism (1978–1992)

In From Accelerated Accumulation to Socialist Market Economy in China, Kjeld Erik Brodsgaard and Koen Rutten shed new light on the changing discourse that has shaped China’s idiosyncratic model of economic development.

Primitive Socialist Accumulation, Readjustment and Reform (1953–1978)

In From Accelerated Accumulation to Socialist Market Economy in China, Kjeld Erik Brodsgaard and Koen Rutten shed new light on the changing discourse that has shaped China’s idiosyncratic model of economic development.

Discourse and Development: Insights and issues

In From Accelerated Accumulation to Socialist Market Economy in China, Kjeld Erik Brodsgaard and Koen Rutten shed new light on the changing discourse that has shaped China’s idiosyncratic model of economic development.

The Emergence and Development of the Socialist Market Economy (1992–2003)

In From Accelerated Accumulation to Socialist Market Economy in China, Kjeld Erik Brodsgaard and Koen Rutten shed new light on the changing discourse that has shaped China’s idiosyncratic model of economic development.

From Accelerated Accumulation to Socialist Market Economy in China

In From Accelerated Accumulation to Socialist Market Economy in China, Kjeld Erik Brodsgaard and Koen Rutten shed new light on the changing discourse that has shaped China’s idiosyncratic model of economic development.