Cambridge, UK; New York; Port Melbourne, Australia; New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2019. xiii, 423 pp. (Tables, figures.) US$120.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-108-48049-9.
Xuezhi Guo’s new book is an exceptionally valuable addition to the literature on elite politics in China. It presents readers with an insightful analysis of political leadership by way of an eclectic approach that represents the best of theoretically informed area studies research. Guo’s study is engaging, dispassionate, and convincing.
The book adopts, in Guo’s words, an “alternative conceptual paradigm” for studying elite politics in China. In justifying and distinguishing this approach, he cautions the student of Chinese elite politics against outdated functional accounts where China’s modern political system is treated as some modified version of USSR-style communist rule, peppered with a few “Chinese characteristics.” At the same time, Guo explicitly distances himself from a deterministic culturalist approach by acknowledging the extent to which China’s post-Mao authority structures have moved toward “rationality.” Rather, Guo simply embraces Chinese political theory and traditional philosophy as sources relevant to understanding the Chinese phenomenon of the “core” leader, his primary unit of analysis. So qualified, Guo’s analysis draws on cultural history—inclusive of China’s deeply rooted Confucian, Legalist, and imperial foundations—to demonstrate the compatibility of the “core” leader practice within the structure of the post-1949 Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Beyond a commonplace strongman, the “core” leader in China’s party-state system rules virtually as dynastic leaders once did: personally infallible, as the mediator of ideology and culture, and as the supreme arbiter of what is true and false.
Guo presents evidence that there remains, even in the post-Mao era, a desire among China’s ruling elite for “core” leadership, a desire imbued with cultural legitimacy. Guo emphasizes that “core” leader status is not subject to appointment but must be earned by the leader, the result of a legendary career replete with a record of demonstrable political skills, “profound” guanxi networks, personal charisma, and “revolutionary political vision.” Where Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping exhibited its features, CCP successors Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao did not. His analysis explains both the post-Deng rise of a collective leadership model as well as the more recent resumption of a “core” leader structure under the current Chinese president, Xi Jinping.
Logically structured, the first half of the book analyzes the philosophical, historical, and ideological dimensions of an enduring tendency toward “core” leadership in China. These initial chapters include a masterful discussion of traditional political thought and moral order in imperial China that exhibited flexibility over rigidity from era to era. This part of the book also revisits theoretical debates on elite politics in China and examines the cycle of strongman politics and collective leadership, the problem of succession, and the centrality of traditional moral legitimacy in political governance.
In Guo’s treatment of the Mandate of Heaven, for example, he articulates the moral and ritual roles a Chinese ruler must adopt as part of the “normative rules of the game.” Rooted as they are in the legacies of Confucian benevolence and Legalist bureaucracy, “core” leaders past and present ideally cultivate voluntary compliance from the highest-ranking officials to the population at large, a system where “all stars twinkle around the moon.” By then comparing Xi Jinping’s “China Dream” ideology against Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory—and the less comprehensive ideological formulations advanced during the Jiang and Hu eras—Guo efficiently explains the consolidation of “Xi Jinping Thought” and its all-important recognition by the CCP in 2016.
In the second half of the book, Guo’s discussion relies even more heavily on experiences from the Mao, Deng, and post-Deng periods as he outlines the “politics of the core leader” (the book’s title) within the context of China’s elite politics generally. Admitting research limitations due to the opaque realities of upper-echelon party dynamics, Guo nevertheless dives into a detailed analysis of CCP factionalism, special-interest cliques, and identity groups. Further contextualizing the intense political environment within which “core” leaders must operate, he ultimately employs three case studies to illustrate the role of informal politics, personal ties, and alliances in shaping and constraining elite behaviour.
Building his argument, Guo suggests that when China lacks a “core” leader, the party-state’s collective leadership becomes less disciplined and prone to greater nepotism and corruption. Emerging from such a period of weakened leadership and factional sclerosis, Xi Jinping’s own rise to power in the 2000s evolved in response. Within the context of the book’s preceding content, Guo’s recounting of Xi’s rise to power in the study’s latter pages rewards the reader with a skilled and nuanced academic version of what the popular media treats as banal political biography. Readers eager to better understand Xi’s ascendance and current dominance in China’s system will benefit from Guo’s analytical treatment of the subject through the cultural lens of China’s “core” leader politics.
With the removal of a term limit, President Xi, currently in his mid-60s, has the opportunity to be China’s autocratic ruler for life, to rule for many decades (similar to both Mao and Deng). Given China’s indisputable global importance, such an extended leadership scenario suggests there may be no single leader more important to study in the world today than Xi Jinping. Understanding the cultural and institutional contexts of Xi’s leadership, and the elite politics that conditions his leadership, seems indispensable to developing a broad command of global politics generally. Therefore, beyond the book’s academic readership, the foreign policy establishment in the world’s democracies would also be wise to pick up this book, read it, study it, and mark it up. The benefits of doing so may not end with current policy considerations but could extend to the next generation of global leaders who will govern alongside China’s “core” leader when today’s more transitory leaders have passed from the scene. Let’s hope Xuezhi Guo’s meticulous and thought-provoking work remains a key reference for years to come.
Robert Dayley
The College of Idaho, Caldwell