Politics In China Since 1949

Since the Chinese Communist Party's rise to power in 1949, it has continuously struggled to maintain its legitimacy as the sole political power in China. Initially, the party relied on mass participation, Marxist and nationalist ideology, and the charismatic leadership of Mao Zedong to legitimize its rule. However, the failure of the Cultural Revolution led to a shift towards a performance-based concept of legitimacy, centered around market economic reforms. These reforms brought about unintended consequences such as corruption, unemployment, and inequality, which ultimately led to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. In response, the party has attempted to diversify its sources of legitimacy by following constitutional procedures and presenting itself as a conservative nationalist party. This study aims to explore whether there are viable alternatives to the current single-party system in China.

Since the victory of the 1949 revolution the incumbency of the Chinese Communist Party has been characterized by an almost relentless struggle to legitimize its monopoly on political power. During the Mao era, attempts to derive legitimacy focused primarily on mass participation in political affairs, a blend of Marxist and nationalist ideology, and the charismatic authority of Mao Zedong. The dramatic failure of the Cultural Revolution forced the post-Mao leadership to discard these discredited paradigms of legitimacy and move towards an almost exclusively performance based concept founded on market economic reform. The reforms during the 1980s generated a number of unwelcome but inevitable side effects such as official corruption, high unemployment and significant socio-economic inequality. These factors culminated ultimately in the 1989 demonstrations in Tiananmen Square and throughout China. Since Tiananmen the party has sought to diversify the basis of its legitimacy by adhering more closely to constitutional procedures in decision making and, to a certain extent, by reinventing itself as a conservative nationalist party. This probing study of post-communist revolution Chinese politics sets out to discover if there is a plausible alternative to the electoral mode or if legitimacy is the exclusive domain of the multi-party system.