Gauging the Elite Political Equilibrium in the CCP: A Quantitative Approach Using Biographical Data

Abstract

Can one man dominate the Chinese Communist Party? This has been a much debated issue in the field of Chinese politics. Using a novel database that tracks the biographies of all Central Committee (CC) members from 1921 to 2007, we derive a measure of top CCP leaders' factional strength in the CC. We show that Mao could not maintain a commanding presence in the Party elite after the Eighth Party Congress in 1956, although the Party chairman enjoyed a prolonged period of consolidated support in the CC at a time when the CCP faced grave external threats. No Chinese leader, not even Mao himself, could regain the level of influence that he had enjoyed in the late 1940s. Our results, however, do not suggest that a "code of civility" has developed among Chinese leaders. The Cultural Revolution saw the destruction of Liu Shaoqi's faction. Although violent purges ended after the Cultural Revolution, Chinese leaders continued to promote followers into the CC and to remove rivals' followers.We also compare the CC support base of the official heads of the Party with the CC support base of potential challengers. The results are quite striking: although the CC elite saw a period of consolidation during the Anti-Japanese War and the subsequent civil war, after the 1956 Eighth Party Congress not even Mao could maintain a dominant presence in the Central Committee. This is not to say that the "winner takes all" school lacks empirical support. The Party secretary general enjoyed great influence over the CC elite when the CCP faced the gravest threats from external enemies. However, when these threats were overcome, the head of the Party lost his commanding presence relatively quickly. We also find consistent evidence that the official heads of the Party tried hard to eliminate challengers and to bolster their own faction through promotions and political struggle. Even today, both Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao sought to introduce officials with whom they had previous ties into the CC presumably to bolster their own influence. Evidence, however, suggests that large-scale purges in the Party elite may have a self-defeating effect. Although the Cultural Revolution and the purge of Lin Biao wiped out the influence of Mao's potential rivals, Mao's own influence also retreated towards the end because he purged many officials with the deepest historical connections with him. In the following, we briefly recap the debate on elite political equilibrium, then give a description of the CC data and the way we derive our "PSGI" indicator, before presenting our findings.

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