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3835 Understanding Chinese:Layout 1 12/7/12 11:04 Page 39 2 The Party-state The CCP is at the heart of Chinese politics. In Western liberal democracies, the separation between state and political parties is a fundamental principle and political parties compete via regular elections to govern the state. In the Chinese system, the formal separation between state and Party has little meaning with the CCP and the state effectively merged. Most people, irrespective of the political system, judge politics by its outputs – material and ideological. The PRC
the 1970s, and in eastern Europe after the fall of communism); and producing books and pamphlets, for example. The ‘party state’ in Germany Many commentators have described the political system of the Federal Republic as a ‘party state’. By this they do not mean that it resembles the ‘one-party state’ systems of Nazi Germany, the USSR or (in effect, if not in form) the GDR. They use the term to highlight the unusually close links between political parties and the state. These links derive originally from two sources. The first of these is a tendency of the
This book offers an overview of the principal features of the German political system. It emphasises four important characteristics of the system: the way in which twentieth-century history shaped the post-Second World War political system; the stability and adaptability of that system; the unusual importance within the political system of legal rules; and the significance of Germany's association with European integration. The book surveys the Basic Law, designed in 1948-1949 as a direct response to the failure of Germany's first experiment with democracy: the regime of the Weimar Republic. The book describes the events of the fateful years 1989 and 1990, which led to reunification, in three phases: the downfall of the old regime in the German Democratic Republic; the period of adjustment and transition to a democratic regime in Germany; and the process and consequences of reunification itself. The book also examines the principal influences which have shaped the present-day political system, the electoral system and electoral behaviour of the Federal Republic, and the features of the 'party state'. It reviews the structure, operation and political effects of Germany's particular version of federalism and analyses the core institutions of government. The structure and powers of the legislative chambers, the legislative process, and the role of the elected representative are also discussed. Finally, the book charts the path taken by West Germany to develop links to 'Europe', and explores the ways in which membership of what has become the European Union impinges upon the domestic politics of the Federal Republic.
The Chinese political system is the subject of much media and popular comment in part because China supports an economy with an apparently inexorable dynamic and impressive record of achievement. This book provides a comprehensive introduction to China's political system, outlining the major features of the Chinese model and highlighting its claims and challenges. It explores the central role of the Communist Party in the country's politics and the way in which the Party controls most elements of the political system. The collapse of the imperial system in 1911, the subsequent decades of turmoil and war and the coming to power of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949 constitutes a truly revolutionary period in Chinese political history. The People's Republic of China (PRC) represents an unanticipated challenge to the logic of history. The key organising principle of the political system of the PRC is the leadership of the CCP. China remains a Leninist party-state. The book also examines the role of the National People's Representatives Congress (NPC) and then the State Council and the associated structures of central government departments. Greater democracy is facilitated, as are other reforms, by the recasting of China's foreign policy to encourage a calmer international environment. China's re-emergence as a major power is the single most important geo-political trend of the early twenty-first century.
Rock Against Racism (RAR) operated between 1976 and 1981, and was a mass campaign that combined anti-racist politics with popular culture. Throughout this period RAR used the medium of concerts featuring black and white musicians as a focus for, and practical demonstration of, its politics of 'inter-racial' unity. This book deals with important theoretical issues that are particularly pertinent to the party's relationship with RAR. It covers three areas: the theory of state capitalism, the relationship between the party and the working class, and the united front. The book then examines the state of the Socialist Workers Party - formerly the International Socialists (IS) - during the mid- to late 1970s. The youth cultures with which RAR most closely identified were contested between political tendencies and music industry interests before RAR appeared on the scene. Punk had emerged as a significant, if somewhat ambivalent, radical phenomenon in its own right and reggae was implicated in the politico-cultural struggles between black people and the British state. Furthermore, it is clear from the testimony from the far-right that black culture was not immune to co-option by forces opposed to the kind of multiculturalism that RAR espoused. The book also looks at some of the political and social influences on the organisation's politics. It argues that RAR's approach entailed a rejection both of the Communist Party's Cold War-inflected point of view and of those theorists who despaired of any attempt to break the grip of bourgeois ideology on the working class.
-Han Chinese peoples of what is now known as the XUAR. While the repressive turn from 2016 onwards has been overseen by CCP Chairman Xi Jinping and XUAR CCP Chairman Chen Quanguo in response to immediate security concerns and ideological imperatives – aspects which are covered in detail by some of this volume's contributors – the broad trajectory of the party-state's governance of the XUAR has been set in train over a matter of decades. This chapter undertakes two major tasks. First, it attempts to provide a conceptual entry
's insistence on stability (Pan 2020 : 4–8). For example, local governments throughout China are tasked with building ‘civilized cities’ (Ch. wenming chengshi ). Construction is often at the heart of these projects because new housing and office spaces can quickly and dramatically impact on the interconnected concepts of material (Ch. wuzhi )/spiritual (Ch. jingshen ) civilization (Cliff 2016 : 34), and at an individual level can help to boost one's suzhi . As such, the party-state's construction of high-rise apartments replete with modern amenities – instead of dusty
class forces’, built to fight. 7 China, to date, is still a Leninist party-state that is far from tamed. Rather than undermining the government, the Internet has become an indispensable tool of Beijing’s “controlocracy”. 8 China’s violations of human rights have grown more brazen and the surveillance state is thriving. Was John J. Mearsheimer, the most consistent critic of US policy of engagement, then right in saying that letting China into the WTO was a fatal mistake? Mearsheimer argues that the future Chinese threat ‘might be far more powerful and dangerous
torture she said nothing about her husband’s whereabouts. The soldiers bet on the sex of the child, her stomach was ripped open and the baby thrown to the commander’s dog. Tassadit died. The UNFA named a workshop in Draa Ben Khedda in her memory.13 The increasingly explicit violence in accounts began to fill the gap left by ebbing self-confidence in a glorifying national narrative about the onward march of progress. Putting the war on a pedestal and criticism within safe boundaries The official end of the single-party state and the emergence of a free press in 1989, the
Violence was a widespread and fundamental part of the reconstitution of the state and attempts to build national unification in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Emerging from a prolonged period of state disintegration, the Party-state of the Maoist period deployed and incited violence not only against perceived political enemies, but also against ‘minority nationalities’ (shaoshu minzu) that resisted unification of the Chinese nation. The resistance of ‘minority’ peoples of Tibet and Xinjiang in particular is a stark reminder that national unification remains an unfinished project and a profound challenge to the state. Despite the greatly enhanced state capacity of the post-Mao period, in recent years the most intensive campaigns of national unification in these regions have increased state-minority and inter-communal violence, with the Party-state prepared to deploy violence against minority resistance in the cause of the greater ‘Chinese people’ (Zhonghua minzu).