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David L. Shambaugh
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China's Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation First Edition

by David Shambaugh (Author)
4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 16 ratings
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Few issues affect the future of China―and hence all the nations that interact with China―more than the nature of its ruling party and government. In this timely study, David Shambaugh assesses the strengths and weaknesses, durability, adaptability, and potential longevity of China's Communist Party (CCP). He argues that although the CCP has been in a protracted state of atrophy, it has undertaken a number of adaptive measures aimed at reinventing itself and strengthening its rule. Shambaugh's investigation draws on a unique set of inner-Party documents and interviews, and he finds that China's Communist Party is resilient and will continue to retain its grip on power.

Copub: Woodrow Wilson Center Press
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  1. ISBN-10
    0520260074
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0520260078
  3. Edition
    First Edition
  4. Publisher
    University of California Press
  5. Publication date
    April 2, 2008
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    6 x 0.6 x 9 inches
  8. Print length
    256 pages
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Provides one of the best accounts yet of the post-1989 reinvention of the Chinese Communist Party.” ― Huffington Post Published On: 2009-11-08

“Sobering but illuminating. . . . Exciting to read.” ― New York Review Of Books Published On: 2010-09-30

“Fascinating study.” -- Anthony Saich ― Political Science Quarterly Published On: 2009-04-22

“A valuable addition to the debate on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the prospect of political change and societal stability in China. . . . A page turner, well researched and informative.” ― Journal Of Asian Stds Published On: 2009-05-01

From the Inside Flap

"Why has the Chinese Communist Party kept its grip on power while the former communist states of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have collapsed? And where is China heading? In these pages, David Shambaugh provides a much-needed intellectual framework for thinking about China's recent past and future."--J. Stapleton Roy, former U.S. Ambassador to China, Indonesia, and Singapore

"To understand Chinese politics, one has to understand the complex and manifold role of the Chinese Communist Party. Shambaugh's book provides this much-needed knowledge and insight." -Zbigniew Brzezinski, Center for Strategic and International Studies

"Unlike deductive or speculative Western discourse on the direction of China's political change, this authoritative book scrutinizes the Chinese Communist Party on the basis of its own discourse about other party-states as well as the way it applies these lessons in rebuilding efforts. The coverage of comparative communism is a tour de force, breaking exciting new ground in explaining the important debates over the Soviet Union. The analysis of the ideological and organizational rebuilding of the Party sets the standard for future writings on Chinese politics. With convenient summaries of a wide range of views by Western scholars, this book can serve as a text that combines an overview of the field with the author's clear point of view on China's future."-Gilbert Rozman, Princeton University

"David Shambaugh's innovative investigation of how China understood the fall of European communism contributes an important new dimension to our understanding of the Chinese regime's own trajectory. Shambaugh shows how the lessons China's Communist Party took from the Soviet and other collapses helped to shape their reforms, which were aimed at avoiding the fatal errors of communist regimes elsewhere. This book reveals how well the Chinese learned their lessons, as demonstrated by the regime's carefully targeted adaptations and its consequent survival."--Andrew J. Nathan, co-author of China's New Rulers

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of California Press; First Edition (April 2, 2008)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0520260074
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0520260078
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.4 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.6 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 16 ratings

About the author

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David L. Shambaugh

David L. Shambaugh

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Since 1996 David Shambaugh has been Professor of Political Science and International Affairs and founding Director of the China Policy Program in the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. He was also a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at The Brookings Institution (1998—2015), and previously served as Director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies in the Elliott School (1996-1998).

Before joining the faculty at George Washington, he was successively Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, and Reader in Chinese Politics at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (1987-1996), where he also served as Editor of The China Quarterly (1991-96). He also directed the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (1987-1988), and served as an analyst in the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Intelligence and Research (1976-77) and the U.S. National Security Council staff (1977-78).

Professor Shambaugh is recognized internationally as an authority on contemporary Chinese affairs, with particular expertise in Chinese domestic politics, China’s military, Chinese foreign relations (esp. U.S.-China Relations, China-Europe relations, China-Asia relations), and the international politics and security of the Asia-Pacific region. He has authored or edited more than books, including: China's Future (2016); The China Reader: Rising Power (2016); China Goes Global: The Partial Power (2013); Tangled Titans: The United States & China (2012); Charting China’s Future (2011); International Relations of Asia (2008); China’s Communist Party: Atrophy & Adaptation (2008), China-Europe Relations: Perceptions, Policies & Prospects (2007), China Watching: Perspectives from Europe, Japan, and the United States (2007); Power Shift: China & Asia’s New Dynamics (2005); The Odyssey of China’s Imperial Art Treasures (2005); Modernizing China’s Military (2003). He has also published more than 200 articles, chapters, and editorials in edited books, scholarly and policy journals, and newspapers. He is also a frequent commentator in international media.

Professor Shambaugh received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Michigan, and M.A. in International Affairs from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and B.A. cum laude in East Asian Studies from The Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. He has been a visiting scholar at numerous institutions in China, Germany, Japan, Hong Kong, Russia, Singapore, and Taiwan. He was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2002-2003), and has been a recipient of research grants from numerous institutions. He was appointed Honorary Research Professor of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (SASS) in 2008, and was a Senior Fulbright Research Scholar in China 2009-2010.

Professor Shambaugh has also held a number of consultancies and has serves on a number of editorial boards. He has been a member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, National Committee on U.S. China Relations (Board of Directors), World Economic Forum, Council on Foreign Relations, and other professional bodies.

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4.1 out of 5 stars
16 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Jack Kennedy Jr.
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Preimer on Chinese Transformational Politics
Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2009
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David Shambaugh has provider the reader an excellent book to grasp the ongoing transformational economic and political changes inside the People's Republic of China. I enjoyed reading it along with others as I prepare to visit Asia this summer for the first time.

One of the more interesting parts of the book is the detailed descriptions provides as to how the Chinese "Think Tanks" viewed the changes in the Soviet Union and Europe in the late 1980's and 1990's. It is even more interesting to seek to understand how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sought to incorporate change into the party.

The reaosn I wanted to read this book (and I do recommend it to those interested in contemporary Chinese politics) is to better understand the United States relationship with the Chinese government. While the balance of trade between the United States and China favors the latter; and, the debt instruments be issued by the US Treasury are being purchased rapidly by the Chinese interests, it is time every thinking American serioulsy ponder the American-Chinese relationship as never before.

I am taken aback by the Chinese drive into science and technology in the 21st Century, I am concerned that America will soon find itself behind the Chinese in a human space program with the next footprints on the moon being Chinese. A recent MIT study recommended cooperation instead of competition between US and China space interests. This book provides a little more context to think about our national relationships.
6 people found this helpful
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Skadden
2.0 out of 5 stars Nothing New
Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2009
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David Shambaugh sets out to answer whether or not the Chinese Communist Party can survive? While the simple answer is yes, he is cautious about predicting what this future party or state will look like. In his own estimation, the major challenge for the CCP is in becoming "more of a transformational than a transactional party...[it must realize] how to remain relevant to society as a ruling party but also how to inspire and lead the nation in new directions" (169). In order to do this, Shambaugh suggests that the CCP might strengthen the National People's Congress or even the role of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Congress to add a greater voice for other parties within the government. He dismisses current suggestions that China is at a tipping point or stagnating, but never provides sufficient reasoning as to why he disagrees. His ultimate assessment is that, political reforms, like economic reforms, will occur incrementally.

The only thing David Shambaugh likes more than the word ossified, is ambivalence. Through the course of his work he is careful of rocking the boat when it comes to current conventions about China. He tells the reader that the answer to the party survival question: "is neither yes nor no but both" (177). This has the effect of causing the reader to feel cheated. When so many other China scholars like Minxin Pei or Roderick MacFarquhar are willing to make bold predictions, David Shambaugh is surprisingly quiet. Where he does make bold statements, they are often academic jabs, such as when he asserts that, "the China field in the United States seems to know more and more about less and less" (23). Shambaugh falls within the existing analysis of the CCP, rather than offering anything new. He agrees with Andrew Nathan, Alice Miller and Jing Huang, that the CCP is undergoing a "reinstitutionalization" (whatever that means) but takes eight chapters to get to that point. Still Shambaugh provides the reader with fascinating CCP memos and documents that require relatively little analysis. In the end his own cautiousness might serve him well. Predicting the future of a country of 1.3 billion is a near impossible task, and perhaps no author should be required to do so.
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J. Michael Cole
4.0 out of 5 stars Is the CCP fit for survival?
Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2008
Following the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, predictions that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was next became in fashion. While the "pessimists" have made careers predicting chaos, fissiparous dissolution or a military takeover in China, the "optimists" have argued that a democratic spring is just around the corner. In most instances, those prognostications were predicated on a monolithic CPP that is little more than a Chinese version of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).

In China's Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation, David Shambaugh, director of the China Policy program at George Washington University, argues that the CCP has been anything but complacent since the fall of the Soviet Union and that, above all, its principal objective has been to ensure its survival.

Little known to most, the CCP and the various academic centers that fall under its purview have expended a tremendous amount of intellectual capital studying the many variables that, combined, resulted in the collapse of the CPSU and other communist governments around the world. In fact, by looking at systemic causes (economic; political/coercive; social/cultural; international), Chinese analyses of what went wrong for the Soviet Union were far more thorough than Western accounts, which tended to see Mikhail Gorbachev as the principal cause of the CPSU's demise. In China's view, the Soviet apparatus had become far too atrophied, too top-heavy, not flexible enough and too dogmatic, while Gorbachev's intervention came too late, too fast, and in many ways was misguided, as it sought to emulate the Western model. As such, rather than the proximate cause of the Soviet Union's implosion, Gorbachev was its trigger (this partly explains why former leader Zhao Ziyang, whose "humanist" views echoed Gorbachev's, was quickly sidelined following the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989).

Beijing's curiosity, Shambaugh shows, went much further than the Soviet Union and included surprisingly detailed comparative assessments of other former communist states, surviving ones -- North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba -- the "Color Revolutions" in the Central Asian republics, noncommunist, single-party states like Singapore and Malaysia, European socialism, and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in China in the 1940s and in Taiwan in the 1980s and 1990s. Furthermore, those efforts were far more than abstract intellectual inquiry; rather, they were undertaken "for very specific and practical reasons: to anticipate what generic challenges to the CCP may arise."

Based on the lessons learned, the CCP has embarked on a reactive and proactive strategy of "dynamic stability" to perpetuate its power, and unlike claims to the contrary, has demonstrated an impressive capacity for adaptation and far more flexibility and open-mindedness than it has been credited for. It has also shown that, rather than a monolithic, atrophied entity, the CCP has gradually shifted its policies in line with the economic development of the country and its effect on the demands of the population. Jiang Zemin's "Three Represents" and Hu Jintao's "Scientific Development" and "Sociality Harmonious Society" paradigms show a progression in thought and greater attention -- especially under Hu and Wen Jiabao, who, unlike the "coastal" Jiang, worked in the interior provinces -- to the needs of the masses.

To meet the increasingly complex challenges of a developing China, the CCP has also professionalized itself, sought, with some success, to fight corruption, and streamlined its ranks.

Consequently, the 16th Party Congress in 2002 experienced its highest turnover of party members ever and resulted in the most educated CPP in the party's history. Guided by the "Decision of the CPC Central Committee on Enhancing the Party's Ruling Capacity" (2004), the party also implemented a series of unprecedented reforms at the ideological and organizational levels, introduced mechanisms, or "Opinions," to evaluate party cadres, and imposed mid-career training.

Despite all this, the challenges to the CCP are rife. As China transforms, the top-to-bottom penetration of society under a Leninist system has become more difficult to achieve. Social and professional organizations that operate outside the CPP have proliferated, and as communist ideology loses its appeal with the masses and the private sector becomes increasingly independent, party committees have lost their strength as the sole source of legitimacy and purveyance. Rather than crack down or turn back the clock as we would expect of a monolithic authoritarian system, however, the CCP has chosen to experiment with consultative models (the Chinese People's Political Consultative Congress) and tentatively introduced democracy within the party. It has also increasingly turned Marxist ideology, which the population sees with growing cynicism, into a more nationalistic discourse, and let reality guide ideology rather than the other way around.

There are, however, certain areas where CPP thought has remained inflexible. Its fear of China becoming a "bourgeois vassal state" and paranoid view of the US continues to inform its policies on mass media and non-governmental organizations, which it sees as Trojan Horses meant to topple it -- a view that was reinforced by its assessment of the "Color Revolutions." The CCP has also retained its zero-sum relationship with civil society and zero tolerance for organized opposition outside the party. As the challenges brought about by China's industrialization and rapid development will only increase, the failure to allow more diversity in the political sphere -- in other words to democratize outside the party -- may very well be the seeds of the CPP's demise, and the 60 to 100 years it says are needed before democracy can be fully implemented may just be too long a wait for a population whose demands, expectations and awareness will continue to grow.

But as Shambaugh demonstrates in this rich and extremely helpful guide to how the CCP has viewed itself and the world since the spring of 1989, we should not underestimate its capacity to see the challenges ahead and make the necessary adjustments to ensure the perpetuation of its rule. While the author's views of the CCP's successes -- especially when it comes to ethnic minorities such as Tibetans and Uyghurs -- may be overoptimistic, his book nevertheless makes predictions of the CCP's inexorable collapse less plausible.

(Originally published in the Taipei Times on May 11, 2008, page 14.)
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Ross Keener
5.0 out of 5 stars For anyone interested in the future of the CCP
Reviewed in the United States on December 12, 2012
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Whether you are a "China Watcher" or not, you will get a lot from this fairly concise book. Shambaugh is one of my favorite China scholars.
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Top reviews from other countries

Moe Hosny
4.0 out of 5 stars Good book
Reviewed in Canada on February 12, 2014
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Dr. Shambaugh wrote a good and fairly objective book about China's communist party assessment of the situation with communism around the world, and the lessons to be learned from the changes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the late 80s.
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