In asking big questions about the culture, priorities, and organization of the Chinese Communist Party, Frank N. Pieke delves deeply into a fertile area of study: the party schools in which cadres are trained. Packed with detail and conceptually rich, this book explores how the ideological and professional training that takes place within party schools contributes to the party's state-building efforts. It is at these schools that the party's “neo-socialist governmental discourse” (p. 9) is refined, studied, and, fortunately for China watchers keen on understanding the internal workings of the party, observed by astute outsiders such as Pieke.
He dedicates much of the introduction to discussing and defining neosocialism as a blend of neoliberal market principles, Leninist party organization, modernizing reforms, and party priorities (captured in slogans such as “Three Represents” and “harmonious society”). The thesis Pike presents is that the party's neosocialist agenda is manifest in and disseminated through its considerable organizational capacity for training political elites. He supports his argument by way of a vertical case study of the Yunnan party school system and the Central Party School in Beijing. Data were obtained from site visits to party schools from the township to the central level over the course of a three-year period between the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Party Congresses, from March 2004 to April 2007.
The book comprises five substantive chapters. To provide readers with context and historical background, Pieke discusses the cadre ranking system and history of the party school system (chapter 2) before broadening his scope to explain the panoply of organizations involved in cadre training more generally (chapter 3). Most fascinating is his description of the “life and work” that takes place within the party schools where he conducted ethnographic research (chapters 4 and 5). Excerpts from in-depth interviews with party school administrators and students demonstrate the relationships, flows of information, and peregrinations of groups that suffuse party school life. Party schools are part of a dizzying array of educational options now available to political elites in China, and these organizations have diversified considerably their range of activities to attract increasingly mobile cadres. In chapter 6, Pieke supplements his field observations with the results of a survey of students in the Yunnan party school system. The opportunity to update one's knowledge is the main attraction to party school training, more so than learning “basic theory” (p. 144), which points to the priorities of contemporary cadres. The party's emphasis on bureaucratic expertise is thus reflected in individual-level preferences.
More broadly, this book speaks to the ongoing debate on whether to view the party as a political liability or an adaptive institution with the capacity for significant large-scale change. Pieke favors the latter view. This book makes a convincing case that careful, empirically grounded scholarship can illuminate why the party has survived, in repeated defiance of predictions of its demise. Pieke turns the notion of the “party as political liability” on its head and asserts that “the continued presence of the Chinese Communist Party is not the problem that the reforms have to overcome; quite the contrary, the CCP's blend of modernist adaptability and Leninist ideological and organizational principles is one of the main causes of twenty-five years of economic growth and social stability” (p. 6).
In terms of audience, this book is intended for graduate students and China researchers who are interested in questions of party structure and political change. It may also fit nicely into a directed reading course for advanced undergraduates with background on the organization of the Chinese Communist Party and familiarity with the theories and existing scholarship on the politics of China, but it is a book that will appeal more to specialists. Interwoven with very detailed discussions of the work of party schools and their role in cadre careers are insights regarding the theoretical significance of various findings. Chapter 6, for example, engages with the sizable literature on bureaucratic transformation and career paths in post-Mao China. In a fairly seamless manner, Pieke demonstrates the fruits of in-depth fieldwork without compromising analytical depth. It makes for dense but ultimately rewarding reading.
Finally, as with any multilayered project, this book offers several new lines of inquiry. The first is one of expanding the scope of study. It would be interesting to explore whether there is regional variation across the party school system and the dimensions of such variation. Second, I would like to understand more fully how party authorities, or the oft-mentioned “center,” exert control over and monitor the activities of the more than 2,000 party schools that exist today. Third, how viable is the party's neosocialism as an alternative to the neoliberalism associated with the United States and the global institutions of the twentieth century? In debates about the rise of China and the kind of superpower it may eventually become, this book provides a launching point for a broader comparison and study of the diffusion of the ideas embodied in Chinese political institutions.
