1. China as a party dictatorship

In their comparative large-N study of authoritarian regimes, Geddes et al. find that a party-based dictatorship tends to be more resilient than a military or personalist dictatorship.Footnote ⁴ They show that the ‘regimes led by a political party that was organized either to lead an insurgency or to participate in elections before the authoritarian seizure of power’ (p. 188) ceteris paribus tend to be more durable than the regimes without such a party organization, and that ‘economic crises are less likely to destabilize dictatorships led by parties that have developed extensive patron–client networks’ (p. 190). This finding is consistent with the observation of Chinese authoritarian politics. During the Maoist period, China's authoritarian regime relied on Mao Zedong's personal charisma and the military's support. Following the Cultural Revolution when Mao had brought the regime to the verge of collapse, Deng Xiaoping initiated the post-Mao reform focusing on the institutionalization of one-party rule to turn China away from a personalist dictatorship toward a party-based one.Footnote ⁵

Being a party-based dictatorship rather than a military or personalist dictatorship provides China with a significant source of strength. The CCP's monopolistic authority over legislation, implementation, and enforcement of the policies has reinforced its legitimacy, especially over the military, which has helped the party to avoid insider coups or overthrows. As Geddes et al. show, historically, the most common form (i.e., 45%) of autocratic seizures of power is an insider coup in which the few opposition officers from inside the regime overthrow the regime (p. 28). Fifty percent of these seizure groups are military ones, and 40% are party-based groups (p. 31). Thus, it is important for the ruling party to secure its advantageous position over military and other elite groups in the party. In other words, party-based dictatorships are more resilient because they are more able to contain the military or other elite groups and prevent them from gaining too much control.Footnote ⁶

In China, the military, called the People's Liberation Army (PLA), has been an extension of the party itself, alleviating the threat that a conventional military may pose toward the ruling party. However, the modernization of military power since the 1980s has made the CCP engage in the ‘statization’ (guojiahua) of the PLA, which should transform the PLA from the party's military to the state's military. Interestingly, to maintain the CCP's control over the PLA while advancing the statization of the PLA, the CCP has adopted the cooptation strategy by creating shared interests with the PLA.Footnote ⁷ This strategy is consistent with the finding by Geddes et al. that ‘economic crises are less likely to destabilize dictatorships led by parties that have developed extensive patron–client networks’ (p. 190). Despite the threat of overthrow in any regime, party dictatorships are the least likely to be overthrown by internal or external threats thanks to the militaries that have been coopted by the parties with extensive patron–client networks (pp. 123–125).

Moreover, it is easier to ensure loyalty to an established party such as the CCP rather than a single person or even group in the military. To ensure the necessary loyalty of their officials, parties ‘limit government jobs and official posts to party members’ (p. 133), hoping that this dependence on the ruling party will create shared interests between the party and its officials to prevent non-compliance with central government actions. In fact, when the Tiananmen democratization movement in 1989 had reminded Deng that a market economy would lead to increasing popular demands for democratization, the new President Jiang Zemin employed the cooptation strategy, encouraging former officials and former state-owned enterprise (SOE) managers to start businesses by using their political connections, and this strategy prevented the market economy from threatening China's one-party rule (Tsai, Reference Tsai2007; Chen and Dickson, Reference Chen and Dickson2010). In short, the cooptation by an institutionalized party strengthens regime resilience internally.

However, the CCP must maintain strong relations and consistent rewards or incentives for all CCP members, including the PLA, to avoid being overthrown. Geddes et al. suggest that there are many reasons why the inner circle may defect, even in an established party such as the CCP. For example, the potential defectors may defect if they are excluded from the inner circle or do not receive hoped-for posts (and will likely not receive them in the future). Moreover, they may defect if joining an opposition group outweighs future benefits of loyalty to the current ruling group. The CCP has solved these problems by becoming the party that distributes rents to various societal groups. Consequently, since the 1990s the major source of economic growth in China has shifted from rural entrepreneurship to state capitalism, even though there has been continuous growth of private capitalism in urban areas (Huang, Reference Huang2008).

The CCP has ensured benefits through the cooptation strategy based on the SOE system, so that it will be significantly more rewarding to stay within the vested interests of the collusive rent-seeking scheme that thrives under state capitalism. Those who benefit from the system do not want to see the SOE reform that would diminish the benefit of the revolving door built between the CCP and SOEs (Chen and Dickson, Reference Chen and Dickson2010). Not surprisingly, those who have strong patron–client ties to the CCP bureaucrats do not demand democratization but support the current one-party rule (Wright, Reference Wright2010). Since the 1990s the CCP has used the state capitalist system as a means to maintain elite and popular support for one-party rule by distributing economic rents. The struggle for power over distributing these economic rents became especially severe after Deng's death in 1997, when China lost its last charismatic leader who participated in the Communist Revolution. Such a severe intra-party struggle for power over distributing rents among the collective leadership was a necessary consequence of maintaining one-party rule while advancing a market-oriented economy. In fact, Geddes et al. show that paying party members, distributing resources, and providing benefits create ‘widespread vested interests in the party's persistence’ (p. 135). Citizens prefer receiving benefits provided by the party, and elites prefer to stay on the inside rather than losing the vested interests rooted in one-party rule.

Another potential cause of defection is that events lead members of the party to believe that the regime may fall. This cause disproportionately hurts personalist dictatorships, in which members' targeting the leader for their blame and dissatisfaction is more likely to cause the regime to topple as a whole. Geddes et al. find that regime breakdown is less likely during the lifetimes of dictators with concentrated power but more likely after their death or ousting which undermines regime longevity (chapter 8). Contrary to personalist dictatorships, party-based dictatorships are less likely to be destabilized by economic crisis and more likely to manage succession without regime collapse (pp. 190–206). Thus, they are less likely to inspire beliefs of regime failure, and hence the regime is more likely to survive beyond the death or removal of the dictator. This observation is supported by cases of the demises of aged dictators such as Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya during the Arab Spring of 2011. In both cases, the overthrow of the personalist dictator ushered the regime's collapse. Despite their oppressive regimes that had tightly gripped control over its people for many decades, the personalized dictatorships failed to survive beyond the dictator's life span.

China seems to have perfected the institutionalization of the political system required to maintain its authoritarian regime. According to Geddes et al. party institutions would make it easier to organize ‘policy implementation, monitoring both officials and society, and information gathering as well as the organization of winning votes and other displays of support that deter overt opposition’ (p. 132) from civilians, military leaders, and inner-party officials. Through institutionalized, organized, peaceful transfers of power, the CCP is guaranteed to outlast any single leader. However, President Xi Jinping's recent move of lifting term limits for president and vice president could make Xi stronger at the expense of the party and turn China away from a party-based dictatorship toward a personalist one. Mary Gallagher wrote in her New York Times op-ed: ‘Mr. Xi's indefinite term threatens the return to one-man rule, at the cost of one-party rule’ (Gallagher, Reference Gallagher2018). Geddes et al. find that ‘personalization of party-based rule decreases its durability’ because of ‘the difficulty of maintaining personalized rule after the death of the individual who has concentrated vast powers in his own hands even in party-based regimes’ (p. 198). Institutionalization of one-party rule is wisdom to sustain the authoritarian regime beyond the dictator's life span. Now that Xi has lifted his term limit, China's authoritarian regime may experience an erosion of the institutional framework that has made it resilient.

2. The Chinese Communist Party as a provider of public goods

Many political economists argue that simply relying on the repressive apparatus to collect taxes is inefficient (e.g., Levi, Reference Levi1988). Thus, rulers must ‘provide reassurance that they will deliver…promised goods and services’ (Levi, Reference Levi1988: 60). Economic development may function as such reassurance while also preventing demands for democratization. That is why even authoritarian rulers have an incentive to provide public goods and develop the economy, so that they can collect taxes more efficiently and secure the capacity to keep providing public goods. Moreover, if rulers cannot provide reassurance on the basis of economic development, they need some mechanism involving democratic institutions to compensate for the lack of reassurance. In short, authoritarian rulers' professed desire to maintain the regime would give them a certain incentive to provide public goods to ordinary people.

The CCP has at least some incentive to provide ‘public benefits like essential infrastructure, education, and health care…to ensure that labor is productive enough to pay taxes to line the pockets of rulers and their essential supporters’ (Bueno de Mesquita and Smith, Reference Bueno de Mesquita and Smith2011: 107). Interestingly, public goods were undersupplied during the Maoist period, and the Chinese government has been a good public goods provider only for the recent four decades since Deng turned China from Mao's personalist dictatorship toward a party-based one. To explain why the CCP has become a provider of public goods, we should note that China's authoritarian regime has provided public goods as the CCP's survival strategy, not for benevolence to people. Dickson (chapter 4) suggests that during the Jiang administration in the 1990s policy priorities shifted to improving incomes and living standards. Dramatic growth in public goods spending resulted due to these shifting priorities. Then, during the Hu Jintao administration in the 2000s, the CCP began to emphasize the importance of narrowing the gap between the rich and poor with the slogan of ‘harmonious society’ (hexie shehui), making the distribution of public goods and general welfare a pillar of the regime's legitimacy. This prioritization of the provision of public goods continued during the Xi administration. Xi, upon becoming general secretary in 2012, stated that the Chinese people should ‘expect better education, more stable work, more satisfying incomes, more reliable social insurance, a higher standard of health services, more comfortable homes, a more beautiful environment’ (Dickson, p. 207).Footnote ⁸

In short, China's authoritarian regime has an incentive to provide public goods for industrialization and tax collection. However, it is impossible to satisfy everyone's interest, and hence it still faces issues with unequal distribution of said resources depending on local conditions. Under the given conditions, the CCP has used patron–client relationships between businesses and bureaucrats in various departments of municipal governments that manage SOEs (Chen, Reference Chen2018). By competing in offering businesses government funding and tax breaks, local bureaucrats have been able to attain political achievements under a personnel management mechanism called the cadre evaluation system and hence consolidate patron–client relationships with businesses.Footnote ⁹ As a result, many of these firms, which found their own bureaucratic patrons, are not motivated to upgrade and raise their productivity, and are instead competing in a ‘race to the bottom’ for predatory pricing. Moreover, confronting the reality that China has less secured property rights protection, as do other authoritarian countries, private entrepreneurs have a strong incentive to form collusive relationships with local bureaucrats to protect their wealth against state predation (Hou, Reference Hou2019).

Although public goods are provided through local governments, China's authoritarian regime has successfully shifted blame toward the local governments when there is dissatisfaction, creating what Dickson calls the ‘local legitimacy deficit’ (pp. 215–222). This deficit is reflected in the ‘significant differences in levels of support and trust for central Party and government institutions and their local counterparts’ (p. 214). Dickson's survey research shows that the regime deliberately defines ‘democracy’ in a way to be conflated to the provision of public goods, that people accept the definition, and that the regime's apparent provision of public goods has become a source of support for the regime, but only for the central government (chapter 6). By contrast, in the central–local governmental relationship in China local officials are blamed when public goods are not provided. For example, the central government uses local governments as a target of blame when public goods are not provided in agricultural areas due to the local fiscal crises, even though the problems have been created by the central government (Takeuchi, Reference Takeuchi2014). In sum, levels of support for the regime are surprisingly high as central leaders deflect popular outrage away from themselves and toward local officials.

Considering that China is a party-based dictatorship, according to Dickson, it is easy to explain why this blame-shifting strategy is successful. First, it is easier for the public to observe and evaluate what local officials do as opposed to the more shielded and detached workings of the central government. This is why ‘most people have high trust in an “imaginary state” they never personally encounter but have lower trust in the “real state” they have direct experience with at the local level’ (p. 217). Second, the CCP is able to dodge public disapproval through censorship of the media. Dickson notes that ‘central leaders are generally shielded from bad publicity in the media’ (pp. 217–218). For example, local officials were targeted in Xi's fierce anti-corruption campaign, which has been considered one of his signature reform policies. Not surprisingly, the anti-corruption campaign was politically motivated and Xi used it to reassert his control over the party (Economy, Reference Economy2018: chapter 2). In addition to ousting opposition in the power struggle of the CCP's central elite politics, it heavily targeted vulnerable local officials. Local officials (county or below) were criticized or exposed for corruption, malfeasance, or illegal activities on the Internet and in media outlets, while criticism of central leaders was heavily censored. Dickson concludes: ‘This is by design: Central leaders prefer to focus popular outrage against local levels while deflecting it from themselves’ (p. 218).

The blame-shifting strategy has worked for the CCP to maintain one-party rule in the context of patron–client networks in China's central–local governmental relationship, but it has not taken place without consequences. For example, when implementing the anti-corruption campaign Xi has promoted coercion by defining corruption ambiguously. In reality, however, before the campaign was implemented many local governments had faced fiscal crises during which they were unable to sustain daily operations by following the official fiscal rules and hence had to misappropriate subsidies and transfers in order to get basic operational expenses.Footnote ¹⁰ As a result, local officials were afraid that they could be the next target of the campaign, which discouraged officials from undertaking new projects or providing public goods for fear of punishment. Superficially, the failure to provide public goods is a local government's fault, but in reality it is rooted in the central government's policy. Hearing the positive rhetoric from the central government, people blame local officials for poorly executing the initiatives even when these initiatives are often unfunded or discontinued behind closed doors. As a result, China's authoritarian regime remains successful in sustaining its legitimacy by shifting blame from the central leaders to local officials.

Moreover, China's response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic shows the importance of local governance, and not surprisingly Xi has used it as another opportunity to shift blame toward local governments. When assessing China's response to the pandemic, Xi has tactically compared China with foreign countries, especially with the USA and other Western countries. Indeed, China's measures against the pandemic are much more successful than most of the foreign countries in the world. The number of deaths per the one-million population (as of 9 July 2021) is 3 in China whereas it is 1,869 in the USA, 1,881 in the UK, and 1,091 in Germany.Footnote ¹¹ If one compares China's number with other Asian countries, China's performance is not as good as Vietnam (1) but better than Japan (118), South Korea (40), Taiwan (31), or Singapore (6). However, if comparing numbers chronologically, one will find that most of the coronavirus deaths in China occurred before the end of February 2020.Footnote ¹² In short, China's response to the pandemic can be evaluated as successful, but it would have been more successful if China did a better job with its initial response to the outbreak.

China's initial failure in responding to the COVID-19 outbreak was a consequence of the CCP's blame-shifting strategy. Giving a systematic analysis of the central–local governmental relationship in rural China, Hiroki Takeuchi argues that competent, empowered, and responsive local leaders are the key to good governance in China's authoritarian system (Takeuchi, Reference Takeuchi2014). Unfortunately, throughout the anti-corruption campaign and other central policies, the Xi administration has undermined local authorities' popular legitimacy and administrative capacity by blaming the local governments, causing local officials to be fearful of punishment, and paralyzing them from performing routine tasks. At the beginning of the pandemic, local leaders of Hubei Province and the city of Wuhan tried to dwarf the problem and hide the outbreak. The central government's initial response to the crisis was delayed because local governments did not report the truth to the central government. When the central government imposed a blockade on Wuhan and other cities, the virus had already spread nationwide – and probably worldwide. Xi blamed the delayed initial response on local leaders, but it occurred because he had shifted the blame onto local officials at the cost of administrative capacity of local governments. In other words, the anti-corruption campaign contributed to the delay in Wuhan when the epidemic began in late 2019. With the upward accountability under the cadre responsibility system, local officials had strong incentives to conceal bad news, which caused the regime to fail at effectively responding to the outbreak.Footnote ¹³ Although China's authoritarian regime has survived the COVID-19 crisis, seemingly gaining popular support and confidence in the government, it is not because of the authoritarian system but despite it.

3. Adaptation to globalization by China's party dictatorship

We argue that China's authoritarian regime is resilient not in spite of, but because of globalization. The CCP has adapted to global circumstances by responding to both internal and external challenges such as industrial overcapacity, failing SOEs, the membership of the World Trade Organization, and the emergence of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. To explain how China has responded to these challenges by a number of adaptive measures, Ye conceptualizes the ‘state-mobilized globalization’ (SMG) framework, where foreign policy-making and implementation is a product of complex collective strategic interactions by domestic actors such as economic bureaucracies, state capital (i.e., SOEs and state-affiliated institutions), and local governments. In other words, the Chinese foreign policy is not a cohesive strategy by the central government or the state's leader, but it is the result of collective decision-making by various actors who calculate and try to maximize their own interests – instead of national interests. Ye argues that the actual policy implementation is fragmented because each actor of Chinese bureaucracies and key interest groups self-interprets and reinterprets the central strategy to seek their own interests. Using the SMG framework, she suggests that ‘given fragmented interests and ideas [of domestic actors], a policy response…is often framed in politically ambitious terms so that it could mobilize broader coalitions against specific oppositions’ (p. 11, italics added). Coalitions are made using existing patron–client networks under institutionalized one-party rule. Ye calls this fragmented policy-making ‘top-down political mobilization and bottom-up market implementation’ (p. 27). This finding corresponds to the argument of Geddes et al. that party-based dictatorships have an advantage of ‘extensive patron–client networks…between central party leadership, local party leaders and people living in different areas [needed] in order to survive while out of power and, often, subject to repression’ (p. 187).

The influence of this domestic political strategy on foreign policy-making is evident in the three national programs that Ye discusses: the Western Development Program (WDP), the China Goes Global (CGG), and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The WDP was a domestic policy but had foreign policy implications. Although its official goal was developing China's less developed western inland provinces, subnational actors took it as the central government's pro-globalization signal to attract multinational corporations to their localities. The CGG was a policy promoting China's outbound investment. However, its ambiguous rhetoric was interpreted by local governments to enhance inbound investment. The BRI has emerged as the most important Chinese foreign policy for the last few years. Although foreign observers have become concerned with the nationalist nature of its officially announced strategy, Xi's cohesive nationalist messages of the BRI have masked the bureaucratic fragmentation that characterizes the policy's actual implementation. In reality, the BRI was interpreted to carry out local industrial planning, expand SOE commerce, and strengthen private companies' inbound and outbound investment (Ye, p. 35). Moreover, because local governments pursue their own interests, the BRI has been used to help finance local projects inside China although it is a policy to promote outbound investment. Overall, Ye's interpretation of these three programs suggests that ‘ambitious and ambiguous strategies have mobilized local state entities and corporations into action while permitting local actors to reinterpret and deviate from the national guidelines’ (p. 151). And we should note that the fragmented nature of policy implementation is a consequence of the CCP's strategy of making foreign policy serve for the regime's principal goal of maintaining one-party rule.

The ‘inside out’ nature of Chinese foreign policy has particularly important implications for policy debates over whether China's rise is a threat for the USA and other countries. Misperception of a country's capability and intention is dangerous because it may have a similar effect to what international relations theory defines as the security dilemma, which arises when efforts that countries make to defend themselves lead other countries to feel less secure and to fear that they will be attacked. An authoritarian country's policy-making and implementation is opaque, and China's authoritarian system is no exception. Geddes et al. and other large-N studies in comparative authoritarianism find that authoritarian leaders tend to cause warlike behavior because they can monopolize decision-making authority in their domestic politics.Footnote ¹⁴ Thus, the security dilemma is more likely to occur in the international relationship that includes an authoritarian state. If foreign countries take China's seemingly cohesive nationalist strategy as a sign of its aggressive expansionist intention, instead of a product of adaptive measures of the inside-out foreign policy-making strategy, the result will be a spiral of fear and insecurity that may escalate tension.

4. Strategic use of technology

The CCP has taken adaptive measures in response to the trend of technological advancements, masterfully utilizing technology to strengthen the regime's resilience through the censorship of information. The suppression under the name of cyber security takes place on multiple technological platforms including the Internet, national news outlets and media, and social media. A prime example of the tight control over what is published and available to the public is the party's official newspaper People's Daily, which publishes news that is in line with the Party's views and does not publish information that might threaten its stability. All broadcasts and print media in modern China falls under the jurisdiction of the CCP's Propaganda Department and the Ministry of Propaganda as it is all state-owned (Dickson, p. 61). Journalists, editors, and reporters that stray from the party line can be suspended, fired, or even imprisoned. Local governments are also subject to these punishments. Although commercial media outlets are more independent, even they report information that is in line with the Propaganda Department's directives, meaning that they ‘do not provide an independent perspective on current events, but merely convey the official line through a more credible channel’ (Dickson, p. 63) as people are less likely to suspect that the information is influenced by the central government. In other words, as Daniela Stockmann argues, the commercial media has actually raised the credibility of the existing official media, made it easier for the CCP to control and govern information flow, and hence strengthened the authoritarian regime (Stockmann, Reference Stockmann2013). Thus, Stockmann contends that the commercial media does ‘not produce greater pluralism of political voices in media’ (5) but instead ‘promotes media credibility across different forms of authoritarian rule’ (14).

The CCP also extends its grip past news outlets. It tries to censor potentially destabilizing or triggering information about local, national, and international events on social media and political blogs while also limiting the ability for their citizens to speak out on those platforms. In addition, China's authoritarian regime offers Baidu, Renren, and Sina Weibo to replace Google, Facebook, and Twitter. According to Dickson (chapter 2), the regime also blocks access to foreign media, websites of foreign universities, and sites and search terms containing information about political, legal, and human rights issues, as well as pornography. It even mobilizes on incumbent and retired party members to report inappropriate content on assigned sites and pays individuals to post positive comments about the regime's policies. Even further, it creates fake accounts to prop up China's good publicity and flood negativity toward the accounts that speak poorly about the regime. In short, as Elizabeth Economy summarizes, the CCP has made a proactive use of information technology ‘to move beyond sounding warning bells, deleting posts, and passing regulations…[and] to seek to ensure that Internet content more actively served the interests of the Communist Party’ (Economy, Reference Economy2018: 71).

From the comparative perspective, the CCP's censorship and infiltration of the media and Internet delves much deeper than propaganda seen in typical authoritarian regimes (Dickson, chapter 7). It works on two fronts: censoring information that might be harmful to the regime while also promoting the spread of information that reinforces its influence and approval. It is imperative for China to maintain this degree of censorship, especially considering the rise of technology and social media platforms used by civilians. Failing to do so could result in a situation comparable to the Arab Spring in the Middle East, in which authoritarian governments attempted to use technology to block sites, interrupt social media communication, and even shut off the Internet completely to quash uprisings and protests against their regimes. These tactics failed during the Arab Spring because they were too little and too late. By contrast, the CCP has made a more proactive use of technology since observing ‘the “domino effect” that had occurred via the Internet during the Arab Spring’ (Economy, Reference Economy2018: 70). China's control over modern technology functions so well because it maintains prolonged censorship to prevent any dissent from becoming a widespread sentiment in the first place. It effectively monitors multiple media and information outlets for ideas of democracy, human rights, public opinion, and other threatening notions to cover all avenues for public disapproval of the regime.

Interestingly, Dickson finds that many Chinese do not care that their avenues of information are censored. He finds that most people reported that they never encountered blocked web pages, inability to post certain words, or having their accounts canceled on Internet social media. For those that had, 48.6% responded that ‘it doesn't matter,’ indicating that they had resigned to it, they could not do anything to change it, or they did not feel affected by it (p. 71). Censorship is most typically met with resignation, and it is very unlikely that it is met with frustration or outrage. This is likely because most Internet users in China are not political dissidents. Rather, most users are just browsing the news, streaming shows and movies, chatting, and doing other politically insensitive activities on the web that would not face governmental restrictions.

Even outside the Internet and media, the CCP effectively roots out major threats to the regime's resilience and maintains control with an invisible, yet heavy hand. Through mass surveillance technology and the new social credit and identity system, China's central government uses technology to combat internal threats and keep a close eye on its citizens and local governments. In other words, the CCP's proactive use of technology has made its repression and blame-shifting strategies work better for the regime's survival. No other authoritarian regime has achieved the breadth and depth of China's surveillance technology, and it is a key reason in ensuring the survival of the party-based dictatorship.

5. The future of China

We have argued that China's authoritarian regime remains resilient because it has institutionalized one-party rule by taking advantage of patron–client networks established in the party-based dictatorship and taken various adaptive measures to economic globalization and technological advancements. However, Xi's concentration and personalization of power has threatened China's long-standing party-based dictatorship.Footnote ¹⁵ The regime's resilience could be threatened by two points of vulnerability that the regime faces, one economic and the other political.

The economic aspect originates from the constant need to balance economic efficiency and political control. Overall, the productivity of SOEs is lower than that of private firms, but Xi seems to give a priority to political control over economic efficiency (Lardy, Reference Lardy2019). Xi originally advocated greater market reform to diminish the role of SOEs when his administration started in 2013. Having observed that China had achieved rapid economic growth since 1978 primarily because of private firms he had a good reason to expand the private sector and shrink the state's role in the economy, although SOEs still played major roles in the Chinese state capitalist economic system (Lardy, Reference Lardy2014). However, his SOE reform has made little progress and instead intensified the role of the CCP in the decision-making of SOEs (Economy, Reference Economy2018, chapter 4). Following Xi's deviation from the SOE reform, Nicholas Lardy, who contended in 2014 that markets had driven China's economic growth, now argues that resurgent state dominance has begun to diminish the vital role of the market and private firms in the Chinese economy (Lardy, Reference Lardy2014, Reference Lardy2019). Vested interests and the need for the CCP to maintain control over economic activity keeps the SOE reform at a standstill.Footnote ¹⁶ The SOE reform would undermine the vested interests based on the party's patron–client networks such as the revolving door built between the CCP and SOEs. Indeed, Ye shows that SOEs play a central role in China's industrial policy both at home and abroad such as in the BRI, and as a result that companies have a symbiotic relationship with the state where ‘the state relies on SOEs to carry out its developmental program while the companies leverage the state to expand their business interests’ (p. 179).

The stagnation of SOE reform is dangerous for the stability of the regime considering that the cause of many autocratic demises is reform stagnation and subsequent economic stagnation. This was what originally sparked the Arab Spring.Footnote ¹⁷ Now that the Chinese economy is expected to hit the lowest growth since 1976 in 2020 due to the pandemic, the Chinese government can afford no further delay in its SOE reform. The Chinese economy had already slowed down before the pandemic as SOE reform has stalled under the Xi administration. If the CCP hopes to maintain economic growth, it will have to surrender some aspects of party control over the economy, which may undermine the vested interests based on the patron–client networks rooted in the party-based dictatorship. However, the SOE reform is now needed to increase productivity and achieve sustainable economic growth. If it fails to do so by continuing on its current path of reform stagnation, it risks economic decline as the root of the regime's downfall.

The political aspect stems from Xi's consolidation of personal power at the cost of the regime's institutional resilience. Prior to Xi the leader's power base was derived from the party institution, and hence Xi's power is based on the CCP's power. This system, created after the Maoist period, was intended to avoid personalization of power, which could initiate regime collapse as it did in Indonesia under Suharto and in Paraguay under Alfredo Stroessner. The institutionalization of one-party rule in China's authoritarian regime was achieved through term limits, a required retirement age, devolution of power, and other measures. Xi's move to lift the term limits on the presidency and divert from peaceful resignations of previous leaders (i.e., Jiang and Hu) has undermined the institutional base that gives the CCP its power and legitimacy. Although his personalization of power may have short-term gains, it has long-term implications that create cracks in the foundation of China's authoritarian rule. In the short term, Xi has concentrated power in his own hands, which allows him to reduce conflict with his own inner circle during his own reign and lifetime. This personalization strategy may be sustainable for a while during his own term, but in the long run there is a clear pattern of party-based dictatorships being more resilient than personalist dictatorships. As Geddes et al. state, ‘party constraints on dictators are precisely the things a dictator intent on concentrating power in his own hands wants to change’ (p. 192). Party-based dictatorships function on norms and institutions to manage succession without crisis, but with Xi's personalization China's authoritarian regime is more vulnerable to splinters in the party, power vacuums, and eventual breakdown as other personalist dictatorships suffered.

Finally, Xi's personalization of power has alarming implications on international relations. The institutionalization of one-party rule has calmed down the internal struggle for power in domestic politics. However, the personalization of dictatorship may activate such a power struggle and allow nationalist hardliners to rise in foreign policy-making. The Chinese leadership is divided into reformist internationalists and nationalist hardliners (Takeuchi, Reference Takeuchi2019). They both agree that maintaining one-party rule is the utmost goal but have exactly opposite views on how to achieve the goal (Takeuchi, Reference Takeuchi2020). Although reformist internationalists argue for international cooperation so that China could benefit from the global economy and achieve sustainable economic growth, nationalist hardliners argue that China should project its power even if it causes friction in international relations.

China seemingly has ambitions to become a political leader in the international arena. Many have seen China's rise as a threat to US leadership in Asia and beyond. Whether China's rise is a threat or not depends on China's intention, which depends on the outcome of the power struggle in the authoritarian context of its domestic politics. Contrary to conventional wisdom, a ‘weak China’ is not good news for the world because China is already strong enough to destabilize the Asia-Pacific region and influence economic and political affairs worldwide.Footnote ¹⁸ When China's authoritarian regime is resilient and its leader is confident in its domestic governance, we do not have to view China's rise as a threat. However, when the regime is more vulnerable, we need to be concerned that China will take a more hardliner stance in its foreign policy.