By Lotus Yang Ruan
What is the Chinese Communist Party’s official discourse on legitimacy?
Earlier in September, Wang Qishan, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s de facto right hand man, openly discussed the question of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) legitimacy at the “Party and the World Dialogue 2015” conference in Beijing, China’s capital. “The CCP’s legitimacy lies in history and popular support from the people. The Party is the choice by the people,” Wang said to more than 60 politicians and academics from home and abroad, including former South African President Thabo Mbeki and former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
Chinese senior cadres have long blocked public mention of the party’s legitimacy, especially by high-ranking officials. Yet, private discussion and academic studies on this subject have actuallyintensified in recent years among scholars and policymakers. Why the sudden mention of legitimacy in public? How is the issue of legitimacy laid out in Chinese official discourse?
The most obvious and perhaps oxymoronic explanation why someone like Wang, a member of the CCP’s Politburo, would raise the topic in public is that they have to. Sixty-six years after it came into power, the CCP is no longer a revolutionary party (ge ming dang) but a governing party (zhi zheng dang). German sociologist Max Weber concluded that political legitimacy may derive from tradition, charisma, and legality or rationality. Although these are simplified ideal types, Weber’s theory of legitimacy nonetheless provides a useful framework within which to answer why the CCP has decided to bring up its legitimacy issue in a seemingly sudden way.
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