Politicized academic capitalism: the Chinese communist party's sociopolitical control mechanisms over intellectualsduring the reform era

Abstract

Why has the significant expansion of a certain social category‘s population and influences– largely resulting from the development of national economy and free market system – NOT frequently caused political instability and unrest to the authoritarian regime during the reform era? How has the regime upgraded its strategies of sociopolitical control by combining the market logics into the conventional approaches? And what strategies has the Party-state adopted so as to preempt and prevent this social category‘s potential challenges from occurring in this ever-changing period? This study undertakes the task of understanding these theoretical questions by looking at the Chinese Communist Party-state‘s sociopolitical control mechanisms over intellectuals during the reform era. Particularly, it primarily seeks to tackle the following empirical issues: How has the state-intellectual relationship in 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century been shaped differently comparing with that in the previous period? Why has it been shaped in that particular pattern? In the face of what kinds of institutional and intellectual challenges has the CCP inherited and created a number of different forms of sociopolitical control mechanisms over intellectuals for the persistence of its authoritarian rule in China? And to what extent could this particular pattern of state-intellectual relationship drawn upon the case of China be extended to other transitional countries?

The author seeks to solve these questions by developing a theoretical framework of Politicized Academic Capitalism. The core of such a framework is a kind of hybrid institutional arrangement designed by the Chinese Communist Party-state with the employment of the market logics as the important means of interest-sharing with and hence the sociopolitical control mechanism over intellectuals who serve in higher education institutions. By highlighting the scarcity and competition as the primary logics of the market, the author further holds that scarcity is the natural and logical prerequisite for the competition, and the competition is manipulated by the Party-state to keep intellectuals being in a constantly busy situation and working along the line drawn by the state. Moreover, shaping scarcity is an effective way to show the significance of key resources and the related interests that could be shared with the Party-state, and then manipulating competition becomes the only manifested way to enjoy this interest-sharing privilege.

This study is conducted on a basis of a variety of data sources, including historical documents, media accounts and reports on currently related events, organizational charts and regulations, university archives, interviews with key persons, and a set of biographies and memoirs of renowned intellectuals. These intensive empirical probes into the complex relations among the Chinese Communist Party-state, institutions of higher learning, and the intellectual community have revealed that economic reforms have strengthened the state capacity and facilitated the state‘s means of social control. And the Politicized Academic Capitalism can be viewed as a hybrid institutional arrangement designed by the Party-state to employ the logic of the market to impose sociopolitical control over university intellectuals during the reform era.