Chinese Informal Politics

Negative externalities of close guanxi within organizations

“…Although there has been a long Chinese tradition of personnel selection based on merit, that tradition was severely undermined during the Cultural Revolution, when formal authority in organizations was illegitimate and when political and ideological correctness was held to be more important than task performance (Walder, 1986). Since the late 1970s, over decades of economic reform, as economic profit and productivity and market competitiveness have gradually gained legitimacy and dominance over sociopolitical missions, merit and performance has never been held higher in organizations of all kinds (Chen, 1995;Child, 1994;Dittmer, 1995). However, much competitive advantage remains to be created in overcoming personal guanxi to build a merit-based high performing workforce.…”

Political Selection in China: The Complementary Roles of Connections and Performance

“…15 There are 275 provincial leadership spells (137 secretaries and 138 governors) that satisfy these criteria. From this set of spells, we drop 17 (seven secretaries and ten governors) whose CV is not available in China Vitae (2012).…”

“…The literature on Chinese politics (e.g. Dittmer 1995) argues that Chinese political leaders build a network of loyal followers to reduce the uncertainty of their political survival. We call this first role of connections loyalty-fostering.…”

Questions on the Study of “The Communist Youth League and China Elite Politics” in Western Circles of Politics

“…He points out that in China's politics, Relationship is the core of informal politics and in the analysis of China's political phenomenon, not only the factional interaction, but also the factors of informal politics and formal politics should be taken into consideration. (Dittmer, 1995) As to "the causes of Factional Politics", from the perspective of political psychology, Lucian Pye believes that influenced by Chinese traditional culture and ethics, Chinese people have a distinctive feature---lack of the sense of security, which drives factional politics established by various relations in China's political ecology (Pye, 1980). After summing up the academic mainstream view, Kou Jianwen concludes that the causes of in formal politics are three views of "power struggle", "policy difference" and "interests conflict in bureaucratic organization", of which, the group supporting "power struggle" claims that the core of politics is power allocation and thus the struggle for power is the fundamental cause of China's informal political struggle; the group supporting "policy difference" believes that throughout our history, all inner party struggles are around guideline and thus "policy difference" is the main reason; the group supporting "interests conflict in bureaucratic organization", according to Western bureaucracy theory, holds that although factional conflicts are associated with power and policy, the profound reason is driven by interests of bureaucracy system.…”