Big Business and Cadre Management in China

Leading cadres in China are subject to rotation. An interesting form of rotation takes place between big business and the political world. That means one fifth of China’s governors and vice governors have a business background as heads of one of China’s large State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs). How this takes place and which qualifications the involved business leaders possess are shrouded in mystery. Based on prosopographical studies of Chinese business leaders who have participated in the Chinese Executive Leadership Program (CELP), this article attempts to open the black box. The study examines the career pathways of CELP participants in Party, government and business positions. The study shows that 84 of the 261 CELP SOE participants (2005-2018) were subsequently promoted, and 20 of these promotions were from SOEs to leading Party and government positions. In some cases, former business leaders became Party secretaries in important provinces or ministers in key ministries. The article also argues that Chinese business leaders have managed to keep their administrative ranking in the Chinese nomenklatura system. In fact, Chinese business leaders are quasi officials (zhun guan) and form an important recruitment base for leadership renewal. As such, the article suggests that the rotation of cadres within the ‘Iron Triangle’ of Party–government–business constitutes the main unifying and stabilising factor in the Chinese political system

Some Preliminary Thoughts

It is the object of considerable debate in Western scholarship whether an authoritarian political order dominated by a strong communist party can continue to exist in China given the many challenges stemming from internal reform and the impact of globalization. Will China eventually turn democratic and will the communist party become obsolete and disappear, just as has happened in many other former communist countries. There seems to be a general consensus that Chinese political system is bound to change, but there is no agreement as to the direction and form of change..

Governing Capacity and Institutional Change in China in the Reform Era

The Chinese reform process of 1978-2008 has primarily taken place within the economic sphere, involving fundamental changes of the centrally planned economic system. As a result, a hybrid economic system has evolved based on a combination of resource mobilization and allocation by market forces and Party and state domination of the commanding heights of the economy. In the political sphere, reform has been much more limited. During the 1980s there were several periods of substantial political reform, but since the early 1990s reform has largely been synonymous with improvement of the governance system in terms of capacity of institutions and competencies of officials. Thus administrative reform and institutional changes have been placed high on the agenda, emphasizing administrative restructuring and downsizing of government organs as well as Party reform. Party reform and leadership renewal have created an institutionalized political order characterized by incremental change within the framework of authoritarian resilience. Currently, major reform discussion in China primarily takes place within the Party organization and focuses on perfecting the existing political system rather than on introducing Western models and experiences