The Communist Party’s Miracle? The Alchemy of Turning Post-Disaster Reconstruction into Great Leap Development

The Communist Party’s Miracle? The Alchemyof Turning Post-Disaster Reconstruction into

Great Leap Development

Christian Sorace

The year 2008 was a period of successive crises for the Chinese government. As Chinawas preparing for the Beijing Olympics, a crown jewel of state power and legitimacy, totake place in August, the 2008 global financial crisis was simultaneously underminingChina’s export-led economic model by depressing demand for Chinese goods. Duringdeep winter, severe snow storms were responsible for at least 129 deaths; on March 14,Tibetan rioters in Lhasa smashed, set fire to, and looted businesses owned by HanChinese;1 on April 28, a train crashed in Shandong Province killing seventy-two pas-sengers; weeks later, on May 12, the Great Wenchuan Earthquake, ,devastated a large area of northeastern Sichuan and surrounding provinces, with anestimated death toll of 69,227 people and 17,923 people missing.

Party leaders palpably worried that these events would be associated in the publicimagination with a crisis of political legitimacy.2 One internal Party journal argued thatsuch a constellation of disasters makes it “very easy for public opinion to developamong the people that it is an inauspicious year.”3 The article warned that “conspiraciesto interfere with the Beijing Olympics” could result in a cascade effect of mass inci-dences threatening Party legitimacy.4

The reconstruction of post-earthquake Sichuan provided the Party and state with anopportunity to address two of the above-mentioned challenges concurrently. A munifi-cent display of care for the disaster victims would help restore the Party’s shaken credi-bility and socialist legitimacy; the reconstruction also gave the Party an opportunity toaccelerate national-level experiments for reforming China’s withering rural economyand expand domestic consumption. The Party was emphatically clear that the post-Sichuan earthquake reconstruction was no ordinary post-disaster situation, but rathera window into the mechanisms of China’s political economic system and state-societyrelations. The state’s perspective is aptly summarized in an internal publication:

Ultimately, [the reconstruction] will be used to evaluate the sustainability of China’scurrent political, economic and social system; it will be used to verify and measure

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the governing capacity of the Communist Party and the leadership ability of the socialelite. The process of post-disaster reconstruction is like a prism, reflecting both thesuperior advantages and profound abuses of China’s current political system. … Every-one expects the earthquake area to become a model example for the future of China’seconomic, social, cultural, political and ecological construction.5

Taking a cue from the Party’s view of the post-earthquake reconstruction as a reflectionof China’s political system, what can we learn from the reconstruction about the Party’sapproach to political economy and its strategies for governing society? How did thestate’s “will to improve”6 the overall economic and living situations of the disaster vic-tims result in a “crisis of trust” (xinren weiji )7 and “credibility” (gongxinli

)8 between state and society? The diffuseness of this crisis suggests a need torethink Lianjiang Li’s argument that “political trust”9 can fray on the local level withoutcalling into question trust in the central state.

The pervasive sense that local disaster victims did not trust the state to act on behalfof their wellbeing was captured in an interview with a municipal vice-secretary in thedisaster region. When I asked him why villagers were unhappy with the reconstructionprocess, he replied with a question of his own: “If I gave you a present, but it didn’tsuit you, you didn’t need it, and you didn’t even want it, but I was adamant about givingit to you, does it still count as a present?”10 A popular joke circulating on the Internetreinforces this assessment:

When a TV reporter was conducting street interviews in Wenchuan County, YingxiuTownship [the earthquake epicenter], he asked an elderly man: “Did you hear thatGuangdong Province was donating millions to build a public cemetery only for Partycadres and government officials? What is your opinion on the matter?” The elderlyman paused for a moment to reflect then responded, “If they are going to be buriedalive, I absolutely approve!”11

The above passages suggest that many local disaster victims do not, or no longer,perceive the Party as capable of representing their interests. This claim resonates withnational-level analyses that demonstrate how “politics has degenerated into the categoryof management,”12 rupturing the mechanism of representation between the Party and thepeople. Within comparative political studies, this “gap” between state and society is fre-quently posited as an a priori feature of authoritarian regimes. According to WangShaoguang, “To such scholars, single party systems such as the one employed by theChinese Communist Party (CCP) in essence could never enjoy the consent of its people;its legitimacy (or lack thereof) is self-evident.”13 By contrast, the CCP explains the“gap” as the result of failed processes of governance, that is, as a problem in need ofan explanation (and from the state’s perspective, a remedy). This article agrees that thebreakdown of trust is the result of processes that can be traced. It specifically tracesthese processes to their origins within the CCP’s internal organization and ideologicaloutlook. We are able to see the imprint of “Mao’s invisible hand”14 in the Party’s post-earthquake objective of “great leap development”15 (kuayueshi fazhan ) as

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well as in its means for achieving that objective through reliance on a scientific planningapparatus incarnated by the political will of a mobilized Party apparatus.

I propose that Maoist epistemology forms the Party’s “operating system”—thebasic grammar through which both objectives and problems are identified, decisionsare made, and strategies crafted. This “operating system” includes technological upgradesand applications, such as a savvier understanding of media relations, adaptive learningcapacity, and governmental strategies that rely less on direct, physical coercion and moreon the production and manipulation of national sentiments and desires. This is not to saythat these technologies of power were not around during the Mao era, but that they havebeen modified as part of the larger transformation from a mobilizational state in pursuit ofcommunist utopia to an emergency state based on the management of uneven economicdevelopment and social contradiction.

During my fieldwork, from January 2012 to August 2013, in over five municipalities,seven county-level seats, six townships, and seven villages affected by Sichuan’s 2008earthquake,16 I conducted ethnographic observations, open-ended interviews with overone hundred villagers, government officials, NGO leaders, and scholars, and read overone thousand pages of internal Party reports. The evidence I found of high state-capacity,bold visions for economic development, and high expectations and demands placed on thestate by local disaster victims, which also appeared in the reasons given for their frustrationsand disappointments, did not fit comfortably with traditional political science concepts.

Methods are not ancillary considerations but primary ones that demand critical self-reflexivity. The overarching methodological argument of this article is that politicalepistemologies and discourses matter. Political understandings organize specific repre-sentations of the world. They give values to the parameters of politics in a time andplace: what are politics today? What can politics accomplish? Who should be permittedto participate and who should not? Political understandings are not the epiphenomenaof structures but their dialectical partners. The interaction of political understandings(both broad ideas and narrow discourses) with political institutions and economic struc-tures generates friction that allows us to trace the lifecycle of a policy: why it wascrafted, what it intended, and the outcomes it produced in a local context.

Capturing in higher resolution the relationship between ideology and economicdevelopment in China also requires changing conceptual lenses. The CCP’s politicalunderstanding does not accept the liberal conception of the political and the economicas autonomous spheres. Even when the market mechanism is the primary vehicle forproducing value and distributing wealth, it is embedded in a foundational logic ofpolitics. Secondly, in many parts of rural China, markets are incomplete and, in Partydiscourse, “under construction” or in the processes of “transformation.” Political under-standings draft the blueprints of what that construction should look like and set intomotion policies and processes—the transformations—for achieving the CCP’s visionsof the future. Thirdly, the CCP’s political understandings do not necessarily lead toscientific knowledge or an increase in control over the economy. The post-earthquakereconstruction provides evidence of how rational planning and dialectical combinationsled to a series of dead-ends and failed transformations.

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The Party’s failure to improve the economic livelihoods of many disaster victimsfurther weakened its ability to credibly assert that it represents the interests of thepeople. When the promised economic miracles failed to emerge, the people couldhave blamed the market mechanism, lack of demand, or a tepid global economy stillrecovering from crisis. Instead, they blamed the state.

When local residents view state power and authority as sham performances andalchemical conversions rather than as the stewards of economic transitions they claimto be, the state’s ability to govern is deflated rather than directly “contested.”

“Bringing Mao Back In”: The Advantages of Discursive Institutionalism

Given the academic reflex to empathize with society against the state (and an evenmore deeply engrained penchant to distrust the propaganda of authoritarian states),17

to say that the Communist Party should not be taken seriously as a reliable guide tounderstanding the reconstruction is a facile conclusion:

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It has now become a “habit of the heart” among China scholars to reject Maoism and itssuccessor ideologies (Deng Xiaoping Theory, the “Three Represents” and the “harmo-nious society”) as blatant lies that merely serve to coat the CCP’s rule in a thin veneerof legitimacy, rather than as serious attempts to define socialism or the CCP’s vision.18

I argue (perhaps somewhat counter-intuitively) that studying Communist Party dis-course is the best way to understand the reconstruction. I do not mean that we mustaccept its idealized self-representations at face value, but the Communist Party’s self-understanding contains the tools to explain the political processes and dynamics thatcaused state-society relations to deteriorate.

Recently comparative politics scholars have devoted fresh attention to the role ofideas in political economic development. At the forefront of this ideational turn isVivien Schmidt’s framework of discursive institutionalism.19 Schmidt divides under-standing into three different levels of generality: policies, programs, and the worldviewunderlying them. The first level contains the specific policies proposed by politicalactors. The second level consists of the programmatic ideas shaping policy formulation:

These programmatic ideas are at a more basic level than the policy ideas becausethey define the problems to be solved by such policies; the issues to be considered;the goals to be achieved; the norms, methods and instruments to be applied; and theideals that frame the more immediate policy ideas to solve any given problem.20

The third level is the “worldviews that undergird the policies and programs with orga-nizing ideas, values, and principles of knowledge and society.”21 This level is similar toFoucault’s description of governmental rationalities as “grids for the perception andevaluation of things.”22 Andreas Glaeser compellingly summarizes the advantages ofthis approach: “To analyze the success and failure of politics, it is indispensable to study

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how politicians imagine the social world, how they understand its operations, and howthey therefore understand their possibilities of intervention.”23

Political understandings delimit the options available for political actors in a givensituation. They not only explain the underlying logics, diagnoses, and prescriptions forgoverning, but also provide an invaluable critical tool for studying policy outcomes.Political projects might fail as a result of a mismatch between their understandingsand reality. For example, after the 2010 earthquake in Qinghai Province, Yushu

whose population is predominantly Tibetan, the Party curtailed the initially influ-ential role of monks in the relief effort and assumed single-handed control over thereconstruction process, relegating monks to the status of passive onlookers. From theperspective of improving state-society relations in sensitive minority areas, it wouldhave probably made sense to increase the monks’ role and influence over the recon-struction process. In tandem with the monks, local residents would have had the abilityto shape the reconstruction according to their own religious, cultural, and socialneeds. Within the Party’s epistemology, however, any rival organization with significantsocietal influence is viewed as an existential threat. Allowing NGOs, let alone Buddhistmonks, a predominant role in post-disaster reconstruction was not a possibility giventhe Party’s understanding of how power functions. The state’s self-representation as abenevolent father bestowing on Tibetans the gift of improved and modern homes, forinstance, precluded any arrangement that would share and dilute its (imagined) moralcentrality. These political and moral understandings led to the undesirable outcome ofa disaffected local Tibetan population upset because their new homes are not condu-cive for their religious and communal practices.24

Political understandings can therefore be self-defeating and “actually underminepower rather than further it.”25 This was essentially the point of James Scott’s influentialbook, Seeing like a State.26 Perhaps not coincidentally, four political science professorsin Sichuan Province suggested to me that the post-Wenchuan earthquake is a textbookexample of Scott’s argument (it is also interesting to note that the Chinese translator ofScott’s book wrote a commentary that stressed the indispensability of local knowledgeand grassroots participation for the reconstruction to succeed).27

Based on the evidence of my research, I claim that Maoist neo-developmentalismaccurately captures the historical accretions of the Party’s political understanding.Although the Party no longer lives in the “mass dreamworld”28 of Maoist collectivismand class struggle, it has not stopped thinking according to a distinctly Maoist instru-mental rationality. “If one were asked what is the thought of Mao Tse-tung, one wouldhave to say that it is not a set of doctrines, but a manner of thinking revealed in sys-tematic sets of ideas.”29 This does not mean that Maoist rationality is historicallyinvariant or internally coherent. In fact, my argument demonstrates how certain Maoiststrategies and modes of governance are asked to accomplish objectives that they werenot designed to accomplish. The following section provides an example in the awk-ward retrofitting (or “conversion”30) of the Party’s planning apparatus to the task ofmarket construction in the disaster zone. Deeply engrained Maoist epistemologies alsoconstrained fledging attempts to endogenously reform governance institutions and

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practices. In the final section, we see an example of how the Party’s goal of adminis-tratively and legally managing social grievances was usurped by a Maoist reflex to viewgrievances as destabilizing contradictions (i.e., broader challenges to legitimacy). Con-sequently, the political epistemology of the Party is neither a relapse of Maoism nor anuninterrupted continuity of Maoism, but rather a scene of internal conflict and tension.The political and economic requirements of governance have been transformed fasterthan the Party’s ability to reform its own understandings, strategies, and methods.

The Resurgence of Planning Amid the Expansion and Deepening of the Market

In the aftermath of the Wenchuan earthquake, the Party responded to the dual pressuresof macro-economic transformation and post-disaster reconstruction by combining them.A report from the Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences31 described the innovation of theSichuan model of post-disaster reconstruction as dialectically “transforming difficultiesinto opportunity, pressure into motivation, negativity into positivity.”32 In the Party’sunderstanding, reconstruction and development were synonymous: “Grasping recon-struction is identical to grasping development.”33 The development envisioned wasnot marginal improvement over pre-earthquake standards but a “great leap develop-ment” that would catapult Sichuan’s rural economy by twenty to thirty years aftertwo years of fervent reconstruction activity.34

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The earthquake severely destroyed the residential structure, public infrastructure andindustrial infrastructure of the disaster areas. We must use the reconstruction oppor-tunity and scientific development concepts . . . to comprehensively plan for indus-trialization, urbanization and new countryside construction.35

These scientific solutions included the urbanization of the countryside, “transformationof peasantry into urban citizens and from agricultural work to non-agricultural work,”and “capitalization of rural assets”36 as the political economic mechanisms for expand-ing domestic demand.

What is evident from the above summary is that the Party was far from unpreparedfor the reconstruction; it was armed to the teeth with a battery of plans embedded inlarger visions of macro-economic transformation. In fact, central Party leaders issueda clear directive to local cadres: “plan first, then build,”37 which was accompanied bythe warning that any local cadres pursuing projects not conforming to the plans alreadyapproved by various levels in the bureaucracy would be subject to disciplinary censure.

The Party’s confidence in the rationality of its plans and political determinationto engineer economic transformation challenges the conventional wisdom that theplanning apparatus was rendered obsolete in post-Mao China. According to politicaleconomist Barry Naughton, “Reforms [of the 1980s] were not clearly foreseen ordesigned in advance. … Reforming without a blueprint, neither the process nor theultimate objective was clearly envisaged beforehand … such an approach might beadmired as the strategy of not having a strategy.”38 Naughton’s emphasis on the

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unplanned and piecemeal evolution of China’s economic reforms in the 80s and early90s no longer adequately explains today’s state-led political economic transformations.As suggested by Sebastian Heilmann and Oliver Melton, “the demise of the plan hasnot taken place in China.”39

Conversely, the return of the planning apparatus also challenges rosier accounts ofChina as already on the other side of the transition to a capitalist market economy.“Once the basic building blocks of institutional infrastructure for the market economyare in place, the age of tinkering has arrived.”40 In vast areas of rural China, the basicbuilding blocks of institutional and economic infrastructures are stuck in ongoingprocesses of “construction” ( jianshe ) and “transition” (zhuanbian ).41

The return to planning is a variety of command capitalism. It is an assemblage ofstrategies and interventions for the re-organization of rural production, capitalization ofrural assets, and transformation of peasantry into urban consumers. These schemes forimprovement are formally similar to the global phenomena of transnational develop-mental regimes,42 expert logics,43 and “anti-politics,”44 which re-pose political questionsas technical decisions for the benefit of target populations. What distinguishes the Chinamodel is that these objectives are refracted through Maoist political understandingsand institutions. The term Maoist neo-developmentalism captures the fraught interfacebetween the objectives of market construction, economic development, and social wel-fare and the political means of the Maoist party apparatus. As evidenced in the post-earthquake reconstruction, however, there is no natural nexus between them, and theexpected linkages were never fully realized. The Party planned for the reconstructionas if the economy corresponded to a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces only needed to beput into the right places, without taking into account the possibility that some pieceswere missing, misshapen, or resistant to being moved.

The Economics of “Blood Transfusion”

The Party intended to scientifically resolve the contradiction between short-term needand long-term development within the reconstruction plan. The central governmentdevolved political responsibility for reconstruction planning and implementation to pro-vincial, prefectural, and county-level governments under the leadership of WenchuanEarthquake Reconstruction Planning Group. This decentralization of responsibilityhorizontally intersected with the Partner Assistance Reconstruction Program (duikouzhiyuan )—a mechanism for transferring investment capital, human resources,and technological support.45

Eighteen relatively affluent provinces were paired by the central government witheighteen severely damaged counties in the earthquake zone and mandated to earmark1 percent of their annual GDP for each year of the three year reconstruction period.46

Each province was also required to dispatch cadres, technical staff, and constructionworkers to be stationed in the earthquake zone. By September 2011, the Partner Assis-tance Program completed 3,662 projects and invested 784.54 hundred million RMB

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(126.84 billion USD).47 The program was widely praised in China as adhering to DengXiaoping’s principle—“let the regions who prospered first bring along less developedregions”—and embodying the socialist spirit “when disaster strikes, help comes fromall sides” ( yi fang you nan, ba fang zhiyuan , ).48 In addition tomaterial support, it was also hoped that the exchange would “introduce fresh ideas”( jiefang sixiang ), governance reforms, and market partnerships into the rela-tively isolated Sichuan countryside. The Partner Assistance Reconstruction Programwas the dialectical solution to Sichuan’s internal development contradictions, nationalcontradictions of uneven development, as well as the inertia of the countryside.

This attempted resolution of developmental contradictions, however, created a newset of contradictions. Party officials were concerned that excessive dependence onexternal capital and assistance from the coastal provinces might cripple local devel-opmental initiative and resourcefulness. Many local governments worried how theywould maintain and shoulder the costs of the new infrastructures once the assistingprovinces withdrew. In an attempt to remedy this potential problem, Party docu-ments called for a dialectical combination of “partner assistance support” combinedwith “self-reliance” (ziligengsheng )49 and “self-help,” and frequently used themetaphor of transforming a “blood transfusion” (shu xue ) into a “hematopoietic func-tion”50 (zao xue ). According to the Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences’ report:“When helping the recovery of production equal stress must be laid on ‘blood transfusion’and ‘blood making’; industrial development and reconstruction of the disaster areas mustbe organically combined.”51 The linchpin of the dialectical process is that equal stressmust be paid to both terms; the assumption is that outside investment will transform intolocal growth.

The hurdles to overcome were steep. Prior to the earthquake in 2007 the averagetotal value of production in the earthquake zone was 2,066.5 hundred million RMB(3.111 billion USD), which was 53 percent of the national average.52 The general bud-getary revenue of the local governments was 53.3 hundred million RMB (869.5 millionUSD) meaning an allocation of 262 RMB (42.31 USD) per capita (a dismal 7 percent ofthe national average). The average per capita income for rural residents was 1,873 RMB(302.49 USD), 45.2 percent of the national average.53 In the immediate aftermath of theearthquake, the average per capita income dropped below 1,000 RMB (161.50 USD),not including reconstruction subsidies. More than 580,000 people are estimated to havefallen below the poverty-line in Sichuan Province alone as a result of the earthquake.54

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There was a substantial increase in the amount of rural families without a home,source of livelihood, and means of production now facing greater difficulties,the socio-economic development level of disaster-stricken impoverished villages hasseverely moved in reverse.55

Although central government subsidies and charitable donations helped the disaster vic-tims with immediate survival needs and contributed to approximately one-fourth ofhome reconstruction costs,56 they cannot be counted toward “poverty-reducing effector stable long-term income source.”57

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Consequently, the economic reconstruction plan entailed urbanizing rural residents,providing jobs for them, and transforming them into consumers in order to increasedomestic demand thereby facilitating national-level macro-economic adjustments froman export- to a consumption-driven economy. The clear problem with this dialecticalstrategy is that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. When an increase in jobsdid not adequately materialize, “new urban residents” were not only cut off from tradi-tional means of agricultural production and survival but also, lacking sufficient income,were unable to contribute to increased consumption. As a result, they either becameeven more reliant on government poverty-alleviation subsidies or migrated outside oftheir locality to earn a living wage, further eroding the economic sustainability of thedisaster area.

In internal documents and leadership speeches, the Party acknowledges a dangeroustendency to skip the basic steps in building an economic foundation. “If the publicinvestment projects in the disaster areas lack mechanisms to promote employmentand entrepreneurship for the disaster victims, commercial and construction enterpriseswill be the real beneficiaries and not the disaster masses that urgently need it.”58 Thesame article warned that this outcome would invalidate the proclaimed “social benefitsof reconstruction.”59

The primary economic contradiction between great leap development and under-developed economic infrastructures was exacerbated by the contradiction between theProvincial Partner Assistance Program and local self-reliance. The continual flow ofcapital from outside provinces into the earthquake zones created the momentary appear-ance of economic vitality. A reconstruction bubble economy formed in which the priceof construction materials skyrocketed and a temporary labor-force emerged to assistin the reconstruction needs.60 After the reconstruction project was completed and theProvincial Work Teams went home, this temporary boost to the local economy wentwith them. Although long-term contracts were signed between some assisting prov-inces and favored disaster areas (for example, the Wenchuan-Guangdong IndustrialEnclave)61 and formal as well as informal networks to help Sichuan’s disaster victimsfind work in the Assisting Provinces were also established, these were the exceptions.According to a high-level Party Official in charge of Zhejiang Province X Township’sReconstruction Assistance Work Team:

The problem with the Partner Assistance Program is that there is no follow up mecha-nism. We went to Qingchuan County and constructed all these roads and infrastructurebut if in ten years, there is a problem—how will they afford to repair it? There is noresponsibility mechanism that requires the assisting province to continue helping thereceiving partner. A poor county like Qingchuan lacks the necessary capital to maintainthe infrastructure we built.62

An education specialist from the Sichuan Academy of Social Science informed me thatthere are schools in Beichuan that currently do not have electricity because they cannotafford to pay their bills.63 As a result of the lack of institutionalization of ongoing wealthtransfer mechanisms, the Provincial Partner Assistance Program fell wide of the mark

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of revitalizing the local economy, guaranteeing each family had someone who wasa wage earner, and improving the people’s livelihood. The dialectical transformationfrom “blood transfusion” to “blood generation” resulted in an anemic economy.

The Provincial Partner Assistance Program also unintentionally produced a set ofcontradictions between disaster localities. Due to decentralized policy implementationand differences in the levels and types of assistance supplied by provincial partnersin the Partner Assistance Zone, the earthquake reconstruction process lacked uniformlegal standards and institutionalized mechanisms. According a report published on thelegal aspects of the reconstruction,

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Due to the difference in financial and effort [sic] aspects of assisting provinces, theassistance fund invested to various assisted regions is different. Though there is astandard of 1 percent of the financial revenue in the last year, it will still lead to thegap between the living standards of the victims in similar disaster stricken areas withdifferent levels of assistance.64

This was a clear recipe for perceptions of unfairness and a loss of Party legitimacy.In addition to variation in policy implementation, different levels of political attention

were bestowed upon disaster localities. Increased visibility and attention meant increasedeconomic support. This coveted visibility could be derived from numerous sources: mediaattention given to “celebrity disaster zones”65 resulted in even stricter Leninist control overthe reconstruction process and its representation; visits from higher-level Party officialswere a surefire guarantee that roads would be paved and buildings would be erected(mockingly referred to as an “inspection economy”);66 areas visible from highways andmajor roads were often given aesthetic allowances to upgrade the appearance of homes;and finally, areas that had good political connections with higher-level officials oftenreceived preferential treatment. According to an internal Party publication:

The residents of “non-celebrity disaster zones” expect to receive fair treatment, atten-tion, and support from the state and society. Our investigation discovered that the allo-cation of disaster relief and reconstruction resources was not entirely fair. “Celebritydisaster zones” with convenient transportation, ample resources, and media attentionreceived distinctly more state resources and social support than remote, resource defi-cient disaster zones who needed help the most. … Cadres and residents of non-celebritydisaster zones feel that they have been treated unfairly.67

During my fieldwork, local residents frequently took me on tours of their miniaturePotemkin villages and pointed out where a paved road petered into gravel explainingthat the road was only paved in preparation for a high-profile visit from a Party leader.Conversely, on an official tour in Qingchuan County, I overheard the Party Secretaryinstruct my guide to “make sure to not let the foreigner see anything bad!”68

The alchemy of turning post-disaster reconstruction into great leap developmentnames the Party’s dialectical developmental strategy. The Party approached the recon-struction from the belief that political will and scientific planning could resolve multiplecontradictions and construct a new Sichuan countryside. The earthquake zone was

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plastered with Maoist slogans such as: “shed blood and sweat but do not shed tears;shed skin, shed flesh but do not fall behind!”69 A People’s Daily editorial describedthe reconstruction as a “symbol confirming the Chinese people’s spirit and faith … akey to decipher[ing] Chinese socialism.”70 Faith, political will, and the scientificresolution of contradictions together formed the alchemical catalyst for transformingpost-disaster recovery into great leap economic development.

When looked at from another angle, however, alchemy is a staged performance fullof rituals and magical incantations. It is a political trompe l’oeil. The failure of genuineeconomic and social transformations to take place is supplemented by a mirage of theirsuccess. A marked departure between the Mao era and the present is that the peoplerarely play the roles choreographed for them.

The Management of “Prickly Subjects”71

When society enters the stage, the Party’s self-understanding is internally dislocated.Although the Party is a distinct organization, it claims to have no interests or identityof its own other than the interests of the people in all fields.72 Consequently, the massesdo not belong to the Party, but nor are they outside of the Party. However, by definition,a Maoist Party must be one with the masses. Thus, in the words of Judith Farquhar andQicheng Zhang, “in China, ‘government’ and ‘people’ are not generally experiencedas two different modes of being.”73

The post-earthquake reconstruction therefore shines a spotlight on the socialcontract between state and society. How the state represented its obligation to societyrecursively shaped the high expectations and demands of local disaster victims for thestate to provide them with immediate relief, housing, and long-term economic security.A common refrain in the earthquake zones was not that the state was too invasive butthat it was not invasive in a way that was beneficial to the people. A newspaper editorfrom Chengdu posted the following joke on China’s popular social media platformWeChat: “Many people actually view the government as their boyfriend: (1) Whydon’t you pay attention to me? (2) Who needs you to pay attention to me? (3) Youowe me an explanation! (4) I don’t need to hear your explanations. They are all lies!”74

These contradictory positions capture the texture of state-society relations in China.We can add to this joke the inconsistent position of the boyfriend who makes gran-diose promises and amorous declarations that will inevitably disappoint. Every time heabuses his partner, he promises that he will change.

The Party was clearly uncomfortable by the level of expectation articulated bydisaster victims. The Party’s propaganda directive to make the masses “deeply feel andexperience the Party and state’s limitless solicitude”75 was tested against and in/validatedby the limits of state ability. According to a report published by the Sichuan Academyof Social Sciences, disaster victims “frequently believe that the government can doanything,” that it is “omnipotent,” which results in a contradiction between “expecta-tions that are higher than the state’s limited capacity.”76

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An internal Sichuan Party School research report based on survey of 5,000 disastervictims conducted between July 7 and July 19, 2008, voiced nearly identical concerns:

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Our investigation discovered that disaster area residents are intensely dependent on thegovernment in each aspect of reconstruction work … 70 percent of residents hopeand feel that the government ought to improve their residential environment and offerhousing subsidies, especially to those whose homes were damaged as a result of theearthquake. This indicates that the disaster victims have faith in the Party and govern-ment. On the other hand, policy makers ought to be aware that a synonym for depen-dence is high expectation and high hopes.77

The ominous “on the other hand” is a clear warning that high expectations contain theseeds for future disappointment and discontent.

One strategy for dealing with the inevitable disappointment was to blame the disas-ter victims’ “unreasonable expectations,” “collective irrationality,” and “lingering feudalmentalities.”78 A complementary strategy was to launch “gratitude education cam-paigns” to teach discontented disaster victims “proper” affective responses, such as,how to say thank you for receiving a gift. It would only be a slight exaggeration tosuggest that the Party felt victimized and misunderstood by many disaster victims.

When these management strategies and affective pedagogies did not produce theirintended results, the Party relied on traditional disciplinary measures to maintain theappearance of “harmony” and mirage of success. From the Party’s perspective, the pos-sible roles of the people were: supplicant disaster victim, grateful subject, annoyance,or unruly threat—not citizen. This epistemological grid for viewing society dictatedthe different types of governance strategies employed by the Party.

Central Party School Professor Cai Xia locates the cause of state-society problemsin the Party’s epistemology: “If there is no profound transformation of the plane of epis-temology, even if our technologies of crisis management are improved, I am afraid thatsome problems will be difficult to obtain genuine resolution.”79 Her argument is that in aplural society interest differentiation and conflict are normal occurrences but that inChina they are not treated as normal. The cognitive tendency to view normal conflictsof interest and coordination as “abnormal phenomena” is institutionally inscribed in thecadre evaluation system’s “veto” ( yi piao fou jue ) mechanism, in which socialinstability can ruin a cadre’s career prospects.80 As a result of the anxiety over con-tention, social actors are transformed from citizens with legitimate disagreements andcompeting interests into a “large enemy.”

Cai genealogically traces this cognitive reflex to its roots in the Maoist legacyof “class struggle” as an epistemological category. In Mao’s famous essay, “On theCorrect Handling of Contradictions among the People,” he divides the social into twocategories: the people and the enemy of the people.81 There are “two types of socialcontradictions—those between ourselves and the enemy and those among the peoplethemselves confront us. The two are totally different in their nature.”82 These differentqualities authorize different modes of governance. Contradictions among the peopleare non-antagonistic and are to be handled through democracy, discussion, and reason;

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contradictions with the enemy are antagonistic and are to be handled by dictatorship.It is worth recalling that for Mao, dictatorship was not a political system but a selec-tively applied instrument.

According to Cai, even though class struggle has been discontinued, the “inertia” ofthe Party’s “ideological dictionary” superimposes “antagonistic contradictions” of thepast onto “social conflicts” in the present.83 This cognitive grid influences how problemsare defined and the governance technologies for handling them.

The importance of Cai’s argument is how the friend-enemy epistemology functionslike a colored lens superimposed onto state-society relations—it shapes the way prob-lems are viewed and handled. As a result of this one-sided Maoist “cognitive frame-work,” Party cadres are inclined to “see problems and not see people” ( jian shi bu jianren ),84 see “unruly subjects” (diaomin ) but not “citizens” (gongmin

), and understand governance as “management of the people” (guanmin ) ratherthan “serving the people” ( fumin ). Deciding how to handle social contradictionsand fragmented interests, the default mode is to use a “dictatorial method to handlethe masses”85

Taking into account the intractable nature of these contradictions and their tangledroots in both Maoist epistemology and the design of the political system, a fresh per-spective on state-society relations in China comes into view. The stakes are not societyvis-à-vis the state, but a more complicated series of displacements of tension that origi-nate in the Party’s organizational and epistemological structures. According to Cai, theParty’s alarmist mentality pressurizes the way cadres handle social problems. “Politi-cal pressure is passed onto society, and as a result, polarizes contradictions and worsensthe situation.”86

The Maoist pressure-release valve for dissipating state-society tensions was totemporarily incite society against the Party-state apparatus, epitomized in the CulturalRevolution. Mao’s famous sayings, such as “The masses are the real heroes, while weourselves are often childish and ignorant”87 and “it is right to rebel”88 had profoundand real effects in legitimizing contention and interjected a radical, unstable elementof democracy into the body politic. The current scholarly “discovery” of “consultativeauthoritarianism”89 is a cauterized version of Maoist populism.

From this firm historical ground, we are in a better position to analyze the reasonwhy participation and consultation are both gestured at90 and simultaneously impossibleto institutionalize. Not an end in itself, participation is a flexible instrument for dissi-pating pressures—this is the meaning of Cai Xia’s earlier statement that although prob-lems might be individually resolved, or at least contained, the problem of their deeperunderlying structure will not be resolved.

The example of grieving parents, whose children died during the Wenchuan earth-quake, reveals how anxieties are translated into governance techniques. In DujiangyanMunicipality, where 909 students died as a result of collapsed schools, the threat grievingparents posed to social stability was especially severe.91

An internal Party memorandum provides first-hand insight into the Party’sanxiety: grieving parents were “establishing mutual ties,” “progressively increasing their

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organizational ability,” “strengthening their contacts with the outside world … especiallyforeign media,” and their demands were cohering into “an overall character.” Some parentswere “emotionally out of control” and “inciting social contradictions during mass gath-erings.”92 The Party was clearly afraid of protest diffusion and organizational capacity.93

As a result, the particular grievances of the parent were recast as threats to social sta-bility. The description of parents’ behavior as emotionally irrational shaped the strategiesthe Party used to deal with the parents. Aba Prefectural Party Secretary Shi Junexpressed an identical sentiment: “For rational demands, we must increase communica-tion and conscientiously resolve them; for some (irrational) deliberate provocations, wemust pay attention to our work modes and methods,”94 insinuating that the withdrawalof communication is the fault of the aggrieved. This rational/irrational categorization isa more sophisticated, biopolitical re-routing of the Maoist friend/enemy dichotomy.

In response to the excessively bereaved parents, Chengdu Municipality (Sichuan’sProvincial Capital) and Dujiangyan Muncipality established a “Special LeadershipSmall Group” to “consult” each household and conduct “thought work” that laterbecame the “Social Stability Work Leadership Team.” This group was subdivided intoa Propaganda Small Group; Information Research Small Group; Stability Small Group;Expert Consultation Small Group; and, Mass Work Small Group. The stated goals of thegroup were: “visit and express sympathy” with the grieving parents; “gather informa-tion”; “listen attentively to demands”; “calm people’s moods”; “grasp the dynamics”;“resolve difficulties”; “establish a consultation mechanism and begin dialogue”; and for“individual parents who are emotionally out of control and engage in physical conflictcarry out a public security conversation.”95 When consultation, psychological sympathy,and repression belong to the same governance tool-kit, their boundaries are difficultto delineate in practice.

When this strategy foundered upon the limitation that people no longer trusted thegovernment—according to one local resident “no one would even want to listen to asingle word utter [sic] by any government official”96—a work team of social workersand mental health experts was assembled at the request of the State Council and placedunder the leadership of the Sichuan Provincial Government Work Team. In the wordsof one team member, their mission was to foster “communication between grievingparents and the local government” and “deflect and resolve the many conflicts” betweenthem.97 This strategy was transparent to the grieving parents, however, who identifiedthe counseling team as an arm of the state.

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The team soon realized the crux of the problem was that the local government’s work-ing groups regarded themselves mainly as executioners and defenders of the govern-ment, i.e., their primary task was to uphold the government’s line that there wasnothing to explain further when the school children died during the earthquake andto ensure the parents accepting or subscribing to view the incident with little resistance.Hence, any concern raised by both the parents and our team were flatly dismissed.98

A combination of material rewards,99 threats, arrests,100 monitoring of phones,101 destruc-tion of mourning monuments,102 psychological counseling, and consultation diffused the

Christian Sorace

tension without resolving the underlying problems. These methods fragmented groupcohesion and prevented organized grievance articulation—they did not resolve theunderlying grievances.

Conclusion

This article advances the boundaries of discursive institutionalism by applying itsmethodology to China and opens up the study of Chinese politics by taking its ideas,discourses, and norms seriously.

Scholarship on the ideational behavior of states primarily refers to “public debatesin democratic societies”103 and discounts the ideas and discourses of authoritarian states.This democratic bias impoverishes our understanding of the non-material motivations ofauthoritarian states (that they simply do not have any apart from holding onto power).Even scholarship that specifically focuses on the performative effects of the symbols,rhetoric, and discourse of authoritarian states often glosses over their ideational contentas empty.104

This article takes a first step in examining the ideational behavior of authoritarianstates. In the case of China, this means taking seriously the ideas and discourse of theChinese Communist Party. I have argued that the Party’s political understanding is areconstructed version of Maoism adapted to the pursuits of command capitalism thatis supposed to generate a socialist benefit for the people. As such, I do not regard theParty’s ideas about economic development as a “residual category,”105 but as a causalinfluence shaping the policy formulation and implementation processes.

My article has also shown how political understandings can be self-defeating.When “policy paradigms”106 no longer viably address changing circumstances andpolicy results are unable to generate “validations”107 of their basic premises, governanceenters into an epistemic crisis. Peter Hall’s suggestion that “when such a paradigmis absent or disintegrating, policymakers might be much more vulnerable to outsidepressure”108 assumes different ramifications in authoritarian settings, in which outsidepressure is vigilantly repressed. Building on Hall, Sheri Berman argues that politicalchange occurs when “existing ideas are questioned and tarnished” and a “demand fornew ideas is created.”109 The CCP’s monopoly over political ideas and acceptable dis-course stifles the supply and demand for new ideas without regenerating them on its own.

This final point is worth reflecting on. The CCP’s self-definition as a “learningParty”110 is an attempt to incorporate learning from past mistakes, ideational debates(line struggles in Maoist parlance), and adjustment to the shifting demands of objec-tive reality into its own structure. The Party’s governance tools of investigation, mass-line, and thought-work are supposed to serve as self-correcting mechanisms. Policy isformulated on the basis of investigation into local, objective circumstances; state-society communication occurs by embedding Party cadres among the masses via themass-line; and thought-work realigns the imbalances between the state’s goals andsocial resistance to policy implementation. The present disrepair of this epistemological

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infrastructure vitiates the Party’s ability to make decisions responsive to the concreteneeds of its citizens.

When a plan does not produce its intended effects, the drive to overcompensateby maintaining the appearance of success subsumes the political process. What I havebeen calling alchemy nudges us into the largely unexplored territory of the aestheticbehaviors of states as ways of managing incoherence and projecting legitimacyin times of uncertainty. The fact that the Chinese Communist Party is explicitlyself-conscious about its own appearance does not mean that other states and regimetypes do not suffer from a similar lacuna of viable ideas and pressures to appear incontrol. Our understanding of the motivations of states and political actors would begreatly enhanced by more research on epistemological impasses and the political per-formances of sovereignty that keep the show going.

NOTES

1. The Party was extremely worried about diffusion of Tibetan unrest throughout Sichuan, Gansu, andQinghai provinces.

2. “The long-held Confucian view, which dates back to the Chinese Classics, that disasters wereHeaven’s way of warning the ruler that he had offended Heaven by failing to act as a benevolent fatherand mother of the people, and should change course or risk losing the mandate to rule.” The Party rejectsthe mandate of heaven as superstition but was clearly worried that the people have not stopped believing in it.Kathryn Jean Edgerton-Tarpley, “From ‘Nourish the People’ to ‘Sacrifice for the Nation’ Changing Responsesto Disaster in Late Imperial and Modern China,” The Journal of Asian Studies (2014), 5.

3. Zhongguo shekeyuan xinwen yu chuanbo yanjiusuo (The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Newsand Broadcast Research Institute), “Jiji zuo hao kangzhen jiuzai yuqing yindao gongzuo” (Actively Engage inAnti-Earthquake Disaster Relief Public Sentiment Guidance Work), Lingdao Canyue (Leadership Reference),15: 456 (May 25, 2008), 12–14. Internal publication.

4. Ibid., 12.5. Su Dongbo, “Zhan zai guojia yu shehui chongjian de gaodushang yong gaige kaifang siwei zhidao

zaihou chongjian” (From a Birds-eye Perspective on State and Society Reconstruction: Using Reform andOpening Thinking to Guide Post-Disaster Reconstruction), Gaige neican jueceban (Reform Decision Making),19 (2008), 23. Internal Publication.

6. Tania Murray Li, The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics(Durham: Duke University Press, 2007).

7. Ma Yuan and Nan Yang, “Guanyu yufang zaihou dongyuan pingtai qi fasheng shehui xinren weijide sikao yu duice,” (Precautionary Reflections and Counter-Measures Regarding Post-Disaster MobilizationPlatforms and Social Trust Crisis), Lingdao Canyue (Leadership Reference), 17: 459 (June 15, 2008), 15–19.Internal publication.

8. CASS, “Public Sentiment Guidance Work,” 12.9. Li Lianjiang, “Political Trust and Petitioning in the Chinese Countryside,” Comparative Politics,

40 (January 2008), 209–26.10. Interview with X municipal vice-secretary, June 2012.11. This joke was sent to me via the popular social network platform WeChat on May 13, 2013, one day

after the 5th anniversary of the earthquake by a local Yingxiu Township resident.12. Wang Hui, “The Crisis of Representativeness and Post-Party Politics,” Modern China, 40 (March

2014), 233.13. Wang Shaoguang, “To ‘Fall in Line’ or to ‘Grab’: Thoughts on the Indigenization of Political

Science,” Journal of Chinese Political Science, 16 (2011), 304.14. Sebastian Heilmann and Elizabeth J. Perry, eds., Mao’s Invisible Hand: The Political Foundations

of Adaptive Governance in China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011).

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15. This term was also ubiquitous within Party plans, research reports, and media descriptions of the post-earthquake reconstruction. It is also frequently used in non-disaster contexts.

16. My research sites include: Chengdu Municipality, Dujiangyan Municipality, MianyangMuncipality, Wenchuan County Seat, Yingxiu Township, A’Er Village, Caopo

Township, Jinbo Village, Qingchuan County Seat, Hongguan Township, MianzhuMunicipality, Hanwang Township, Qingping Township, Beichuan County, ShuixiuVillage, Mao County Seat, Taiping Township, Lianghekou Village, Niushikou Village,Li County, An County, Xiaoba Township, Pi County, and finally Qinghai Province,Yushu (where an earthquake occurred on April 14, 2010).

17. The pervasive attitude of dismissal toward the discourses of authoritarian states is encapsulated byRobert Dahl’s statement that, “Even the most repressive dictatorships usually pay some lip service to thelegitimate right of the people to participate in the government.” Robert Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation andOpposition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), 5.

18. Frank N. Pieke, The Good Communist: Elite Training and State Building in Today’s China(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2009), 4.

19. Vivien A. Schmidt, “Discursive Institutionalism: The Explanatory Power of Ideas and Discourse,”Annual Review of Political Science, 11 (2008), 303–26.

20. Ibid., 306.21. Ibid.22. Michel Foucault, “Questions of Method,” in Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, eds.,

The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 81–82.23. Andreas Glaeser, Political Epistemics: The Secret Police, the Opposition, and the End of East

German Socialism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 52.24. The housing design failed to include a large living room, which is culturally important for hosting

extended family gatherings. Also, no space was allotted for the construction of a temple in the front yard.According to a political science professor who researched the local situation, “The people were not consultedand the Tibetan traditions were not understood. The scale and design of the reconstructed homes led to hugecomplaints and were rejected by the local Tibetans, who did not want to live in them.” Phone interview withprofessor from G University, November 2012.

25. Glaeser, 52.26. James Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have

Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).27. “If local people do not participate, many problems will potentially emerge in the post-disaster plan

and reconstruction.”Wang Xiaoyi, “Duiyu jinxing Wenchuan dizhen zaiqu shehui wangluo huifu chongjian yupinggu wenti de jianyi,” (Regarding implementing social network restoration and reconstruction in the post-Wenchuan earthquake disaster areas: evaluation of problems and suggestions), Zhongguo shehuixue wang(China Sociology Web), July 25, 2008.

28. Susan Buck-Morss, Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West(Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000).

29. Franz Schurmann, Ideology and Organization in Communist China (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1968), 24.

30. Kathleen Thelen, “How Institutions Evolve. Insights from Comparative Historical Analysis,” inJames Mahoney and Dietrich Reuschemeyer, eds., Comparative Historical Analyses in the Social Sciences(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 226.

31. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and its provincial level branches maintain an ambiguousidentity as part research university, part government think-tank.

32. Gu Songqing, Fazhanxing chongjian zaihou jueqi de Sichuan moshi (Development Model Recon-struction: The Emergence of the Post-Disaster Sichuan Method), (Sichuan renmin chubanshe, 2011), 10.

33. Ibid., 10.34. Ibid., 37; 49–54; 60–62.35. Development Research Center of the State Council (DRC), “Wenchuan dizhen zaihou chongjian de

ruogan zhongyao wenti” (Several Important Problems Concerning the Post-Wenchuan Earthquake Recon-struction), 90 (2008), 5. Internal publication.

36. Gu, 72–73.37. DRC, “Several Important Problems,” 3.38. Barry Naughton, Growing Out of the Plan: Chinese Economic Reform 1978–1993 (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1995), 5.

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39. Sebastian Heilmann and Oliver Melton, “The Reinvention of Development Planning in China,1993–2012,” Modern China, 39 (2013), 581.

40. Yang Dali, Remaking the Chinese Leviathan: Market Transition and the Politics of Governance inChina (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 21.

41. The Party’s nearly ubiquitous usage of the terms “construction” and “transformation” in its planningdocuments suggests that in its own esteem the process is nowhere near complete.

42. Li, 2007.43. Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity (Berkeley: University of

California Press 2002).44. James Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: Development, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power

in Lesotho (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994).45. Liu Tie, Duikouzhiyuan de yunxing jizhi jiqi fazhihua: jiyu wenchuan dizhen zaihou huifu chongjian

de shizheng fenxi (The Operation and Legalization of the Partner Assistance Mechanism: In View of anAnalysis of the Empirical Evidence of the Post-Wenchuan Earthquake Recovery and Reconstruction) (Falüchubanshe, 2010).

46. The Partnership Assistance Program was in part made possible by the over-surplus in manufacturingcapacity caused by the 2008 financial crisis. The transfer of capital, technology, manufactures, and labor to thedisaster area acted as a release valve for surpluses that had accumulated. I would like to thank an anonymousreviewer from Comparative Politics for bringing this point to my attention.

47. Wan Penlong and Ma Jian, Cong beizhuang xiang haomai: kangji wenchuan teda dizhen zaihai deSichuan shijian (From Tragedy to Heroism: The Sichuan Practice of Resistance against the Great WenchuanEarthquake)(Sichuan renmin chubanshe, 2011), 9.

48. Ibid., 9; Liu, 26.49. This term was also widely used during the Mao period to promote economic autarky.50. Gu, 52, 62–64; Liu, 35.51. Gu, 303.52. Huang Chengwei and Lu Hanwen, Wenchuan dadizhen zaihou pinkuncun chongjian jincheng yu

tiaozhan (Wenchuan Earthquake Post-Disaster Reconstruction of Impoverished Villages: Process andChallenges) (Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2011), 25.

53. Ibid., 26.54. Ibid., 24.55. Ibid., 26.56. The earthquake reconstruction subsidies were 16,000 RMB (2,576.15 USD) for a house with under

3 persons; 19,000 RMB (3,059.18 USD) from 3–5 persons household; and 22,000 RMB (3,542.21 USD)for 5 or more persons household. The average home construction costs were approximately 80,000 RMB(12,880.78 USD) based on interviews.

57. Huang and Lu, 27.58. Zhu Ling, “Ba jianshao pinkun de mubiao naru zaiqu chongjian jihua” (Incorporate the Goal of

Poverty Reduction into Disaster Area Reconstruction Planning), Guanli Xinxi (Management Information)(2008), 12–13. Internal Reference.

59. Ibid.60. Development Research Center of the State Council (DRC), “Wenchuan dizhen zaihai dui woguo jingji

zengzhang de yingxiang pinggu” (Assessment of the Wenchuan Earthquake’s Impact on China’s EconomicGrowth), 89 (2008), 1–24. Internal publication.

61. Gu, 303.62. Interview, Zhejiang province, January 2013.63. Interview, Chengdu, July 2013.64. Chen Guaming, Wenchuan dizhenhou huifu chongjian zhuyao falv wenti (Research on Main Legal

Issues in Post-Wenchuan Earthquake Rehabilitation and Reconstruction) (Falü chubanshe, 2010), 127.65. Zhao Gang, “Yingdui zaimin de liyi he gongyi suqiu xuyao zhuyi de jige wenti” (Several Problems to

Pay Attention to When Handling Disaster Victims’ Benefits and Righteous Demands), Lingdao canyue(Leadership Reference), 13–15. Internal publication.

66. Cai Yongshun, “Irresponsible state: local cadres and image-building in China,” The Journal ofCommunist Studies and Transition Politics, 20 (2004), 31.

67. Zhao, 13.68. The most famous example of the politics of aesthetics and the foreign gaze in China is the virulent

reaction to Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1972 film Chung Kuo.

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69. “Feixu shang da xie Qingchuan—Qingchuanxian kexue tuijin zaihou huifu chongjian jishi” (WritingQingchuan on the ruins – Qingchuan county scientifically advancing post-disaster restoration and reconstruc-tion record of events), Sichuan Ribao (The Sichuan Daily) (May 5, 2010).

70. Ren Zhongping, “Wenchuan teda dizhen san zhounian zhi” (On the Third Anniversary of theWenchuan Earthquake,” People’s Daily, May 11, 2011, available at http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2011-05-11/113422444531.shtml, last accessed June 6, 2014.

71. Tania Murray Li developed this term in her discussion of how local residents in Indonesia often reject,critique, or challenge plans to improve their lives. See Li, 2007.

72. Constitution of the Communist Party of China. 2012. Revised and Adopted at the Eighteenth NationalCongress of the Communist Party of China.

73. Judith Farquhar and Qicheng Zhang, “Biopolitical Beijing: Pleasure, Sovereignty, and Self-Cultivation in China’s Capital,” Cultural Anthropology, 20 (2005), 309.

74. WeChat post, relayed to author on May 28, 2014.75. Ma and Nan, 17.76. Gu, 91.77. Wang Fenyu, He Guangxi, Ma Ying, Deng Dasheng, and Zhao Yandong, “Wenchuan dizhen zaiqu

jumin de shenghuo zhuangkuang yu zhengce xuqiu” (Wenchuan Earthquake Disaster Area Residents LivingCircumstance and Policy Needs), Jan. 13, 2009, available at http://www.china.com.cn/aboutchina/zhuanti/09zgshxs/content_17099440_5.htm, last accessed July 6, 2014.

78. Dujiangyanshi dangxiao (Dujiangyan Communist Party School), Huifu, fazhan, chuangxin: 2009nian zaihou chongjian youxiu yanjiu wenji xuanbian (Reconstruction, Development, Innovation: SelectedWorks of Excellent Research Reports Regarding the 2009 Post-Disaster Reconstruction Situation), (2009), 91.Internal publication.

79. Cai Xia, “Miandui quntixing shijian de sikao,” Lilun Dongtai (Theoretical Trends), 1795 (2008), 35.Internal reference.

80. Ibid., 36.81. It is worth pointing out the affinity between Mao and German jurist Carl Schmitt’s definition of

the political as the sovereign decision regarding the friend/enemy distinction. See: Carl Schmitt, TheConcept of the Political, trans. George Schwab (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

82. Mao Zedong, “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People,” February 27, 1958,trans. public at https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_58.htm.

83. Cai Xia, 36.84. Ibid.85. Ibid.86. Ibid.87. Mao Zedong, “Preface and Postscript to Rural Surveys,” March and April 1941, trans. public at

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-3/mswv3_01.htm.88. Mao Zedong, “A Letter to the Red Guards of Tsinghua University Middle School,” August 1, 1966,

trans. public at http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-9/mswv9_60.htm.89. Baogang He and Mark E. Warren, “Authoritarian Deliberation: The Deliberative Turn in Chinese

Political Development,” Perspectives on Politics, 9 (June 2011), 269–89; Jessica Teets, “Let Many CivilSocieties Bloom: The Rise of Consultative Authoritarianism in China,” The China Quarterly, 213 (March2013), 19–38.

90. The central state’s reconstruction guidelines mandated consultation and participatory mechanisms fordisaster victims. See: State Planning Group of the Post-Wenchuan Earthquake Restoration and Reconstruction,Wenchuan dizhen zaihou huifu chongjian zongti guihui (The Overall Plan for the Post-Wenchuan EarthquakeRestoration and Reconstruction).

91. I obtained this document from an archive in the Sichuan Provincial Communist Party School. Due tothe sensitivity of the document, the author’s name and work unit were omitted. It appears to be the report of aTemporary Work Group, specially created to stabilize the social unrest. “Guanyu Dujiangyanshi xuexiaoshewen wenti youguan qingkuang de huibao”(Situation Report Concerning Problems Involving CollapsedSchools in Dujiangyan Municipality).

92. Ibid.93. Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts, “How Censorship in China Allows Government

Criticism but Silences Collective Expression,” American Political Science Review, 107 (May 2013), 1–18.94. Shi Jun, “Chuangzao wukui yu shidai he lishi de jiaoren yeji—zai canjia zhou shi jie renda wu ci

huiyi Wenchuan daibiaotuan shenyi shi de jianghua” (Create without Qualms the Proud and Outstanding

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Achievement of an Epoch and History—Aba Prefecture 10th People’s Congress Conference Speech GivenDuring the Deliberation of the Wenchuan Delegation) (February 4, 2010).

95. “Situation Report.”96. Chen Tao, “Social Workers as Conflict Mediator: Lessons from the Wenchuan Earthquake,” China

Journal of Social Work, 2 (2009), 182.97. Ibid., 179.98. Ibid., 182.99. Material rewards for acquiescence were undisclosed compensation fees. In Yingxiu township, several

protesting parents were given jobs as city management officers. Interview with local residents in Yingxiutownship, August 2013.

100. Although he was not a grieving parent, activist Tan Zuoren’s investigation of the collapsed schoolsresulted in his arrest and imprisonment on charges of “state subversion.” For a summary of Tan’s research, seeTan Zuoren, “Longmenshan: Qing wei Beichuan haizimen” (Longmen Mountains: Please Testify forBeichuan’s Children.” Dissident artist Ai Weiwei’s first clash with the local Chengdu police departmentoccurred when he was blocked from attending Tan Zuoren’s trial, see: Christian Sorace, “China’s LastCommunist: Ai Weiwei,” Critical Inquiry (February 2014), 394–10.

101. Some of my interview subjects in Yingxiu township alleged that their phones were tapped. I askedhow they knew this—one of the grieving parents told me that anytime she tried to assemble a small, privatemeeting, a public security would show up immediately or even arrive a bit early!

102. Grieving parents in Beichuan gathered fragments from the collapsed school to form a makeshift,informal memorial site. According to a professor from University M in Chengdu, “Later, this monumentwas smashed to pieces by riot police from Qingdao using a machine gun,” quoted in Ai Xiaoming,Gongmin diaocha (An Investigation by Citizens) documentary film (2009).

103. Schmidt, 312; also see: Pete Mohanty and Terri E. Givens, “Analyzing Discourses,” in Terri E. Givensand Rhonda Evans Case, eds., Legislating Equality: the Politics of Antidiscrimination in the European Union(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

104. Lisa Wedeen, Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was NoMore: The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).

105. Mark Blythe, “‘Any More Bright Ideas?’ The Ideational Turn of Comparative Political EconomyIdeas and Foreign Policy (Review),” Comparative Politics, 29 (1997), 230.

106. Peter A. Hall, “Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State: The Case of EconomyPolicymaking in Britain,” Comparative Politics, 25 (April 1993), 275–96.

107. Glaeser, 166–208.108. Hall, 291.109. Sheri Berman, “Ideational Theorizing in the Social Sciences since ‘Policy Paradigms, Social

Learning, and the State,’” Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, andInstitutions, 26 (April 2013), 227.

110. Wen-Hsuan Tsai and Nicola Dean, “The CCP’s Learning System: Thought Unification and RegimeAdaptation,” The China Journal (January 2013), 87–107.

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The Communist Party’s Miracle? The Alchemy of Turning Post-Disaster Reconstruction into Great Leap Development

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