The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has traditionally attached great importance to training its leading cadres and developing cadre training institutions. One reason why the CCP prevailed over the Kuomintang was its organizational advantage, even though it faced a far better-equipped and financed Kuomintang party and army.Footnote ² The CCP's elite training institutions helped foster this organizational advantage. The network of Party Schools, United Front Work “revolutionary training colleges,” other cadre training academies and, since the 1980s, schools of administration, together form a nationwide cadre educational and leadership training system. The Party and government have invested heavily in this system over the six decades of CCP rule, upgrading and modernizing it, especially after the neglect of the Cultural Revolution. The official depiction that “in all stages of the country's history of revolution, construction and reform, the Party has spared no efforts in developing training centres at all levels to produce class after class of elite leaders,” is telling and accurate.Footnote ³

The CCP reorganized the national leadership training system in 2005 when it officially opened three new cadre training academies (ganbu xueyuan 干部学院) in Pudong-Shanghai 上海浦东, Jinggangshan 井冈山 and Yan'an 延安.Footnote ⁴ The creation of these new “executive leadership academies” – CELAP, CELAJ and CELAY – represents the most dramatic changes to the Party's cadre training structure.Footnote ⁵ The new organs, operating under the direction of the Party's Central Organization Department (Zhongyang zuzhibu 中央组织部, the COD), have joined the Central Party School (Zhongyang dangxiao 中央党校, the CPS) and the China National School of Administration (Zhongguo guojia xingzheng xueyuan 中国国家行政学院) at the top of the national training system. The decision to open these three academies involved sizeable allocations of financial and human resources.Footnote ⁶ While recently published research has described the changing character and growing significance of the Party Schools,Footnote ⁷ less is known about the leadership academies under the COD or their significance to “Party rebuilding.” Yet the ways in which the CCP is rebuilding its leading cadre corps and leadership training system will be a crucial factor in determining whether the Party will be able to govern the country effectively and legitimately, and thereby preserve, or even strengthen, its hold on power.

This article analyses how the CCP is adapting institutionally to a rapidly changing environment, through a top-down nationally co-ordinated programme of leadership training reform, orchestrated by the COD.Footnote ⁸ It offers three main findings. First, the system is being remade to put greater emphasis on the “spirit of reform and innovation,” and the creation of CELAP in particular, but also CELAJ and CELAY, is an integral part of this reform agenda. Second, while China's political elite clearly attaches more importance to innovation than in the past, it is also trying to ensure that sufficient attention and resources are given to preserving the rule of the CCP. The guiding logic behind the reform of the national leadership training system is to promote enough innovation in leadership training and research to enable the Party to meet the changing governance requirements of a market transition and economic globalization, while at the same time taking measures to preserve the Party's rule. The desired effect is simultaneously transformative and conservative. Third, although the CPS continues to tout itself as the key (Party) institution for leadership training, the Party leadership has in fact diversified by establishing the new group of leadership training academies under the COD. CELAP, in particular, is gradually displacing the CPS as the key organ for the Party's research and training on innovative leadership approaches, techniques and style.

Innovate or Perish

Traditionally, Party building was seen by the CCP as “linked to the Party's historical tasks and to the theories and lines established by the Party in order to accomplish its tasks.”Footnote ⁹ It meant making the “implementation of the basic line the be-all and end-all of Party building.” However, it started to take on tones of “re-building” as the era of the Third Generation leadership of Jiang Zemin, Li Peng and Zhu Rongji drew to a close.

Jiang Zemin's farewell address to the 16th Party Congress in November 2002 emphasizes that:

While it was not exactly a “matter of life and death struggle” for the Party, the speech clearly indicated that the Party elite was attaching greater importance to upgrading its leading cadres.

Since assuming the top posts in late 2002 following the 16th Party Congress, Hu Jintao and the Fourth Generation leadership have followed suit by stating that: “Our goal today of bringing prosperity to the whole country by developing socialism with Chinese characteristics makes it imperative that the Party launch large-scale training programmes to significantly improve the quality of our cadres.” Hu had a strong appreciation for cadre training and the modernization of the cadre system from his almost decade-long tenure as president of the CPS (1993–2002). He launched a series of initiatives in cadre training to give further momentum to the Party (re)building drive and to strengthen its leading role. The key document was the “Decision of the Central Committee on the Strengthening of the Establishment of the Party's Governing Ability” (Zhonggong Zhongyang guanyu jiaqiang dang de zhizheng nengli jiangshe de jueding 中共中央关于加强党的执政能力建设的决定), which was passed on 19 September 2004 at the Fourth Plenum of the Central Committee of the 16th Party Congress.Footnote ¹¹

Hu, firmly ensconced as the head of the Party, state and army by the time of the 17th Party Congress (15 October 2007), offered a candid admission of the Party's need to give more attention to reinforcing its “right to rule.” In his report to the Congress, Hu emphasized that:

In practice, this means building high-quality leading cadres and leading bodies at all levels, promoting “scientific, democratic and law-based governance,” and improving the art of leadership, with styles of leadership, the leadership system and the working mechanisms of the leading bodies as priorities.Footnote ¹³

The current emphasis that the Party is placing on leadership “innovation” training and research is the latest stage in its evolving attitude towards professional managerial training. This dimension of Party reform has its origins in earlier inner-Party struggles between the COD and the Party Propaganda Department in the early to mid 1980s. After Deng Xiaoping and Chen Yun launched the post-Mao Party reform process in the late 1970s the Organization Department started to champion “leadership science” training as an essential component of these reforms. At the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee of the CCP (December 1978), which launched the post-Mao reforms,Footnote ¹⁴ Deng said: “If we ourselves don't know about advanced management methods of management, we should learn from those who do, either at home or abroad.”Footnote ¹⁵ Paltiel has described how the Propaganda Department and the Party theoretical journal Hongqi upheld the place of ideological education in cadre training to evaluate eligibility for promotion. The COD, in contrast, urged the Party to establish differing rules, categories and institutions to train, recruit and deploy different categories of leading cadres and managers.Footnote ¹⁶ Leadership science was envisaged as the product of combining some elements of Western management science – decision-making theory, systems theory, management by objectives/results – with elements of Marxist Leninist leadership theory and practice, as well as revolutionary strategy.

The current push for leadership innovation represents a departure from the previous leadership science concept in two senses. First, the new idea sees the scope of leadership skills as both comprehensive (macro) and detailed-oriented or case-specific (micro), whereas leadership science emphasized the general over the specific; that leadership meant a strategic, comprehensive activity.Footnote ¹⁷ The present aim is to develop leadership skills that are both comprehensive – by providing training on a broad range of issues that a leading cadre or official might encounter, not just executive or management training per se – and also practical issue- or case-specific skills. The goal of lecture courses such as “Ruling and supervision,” “Function and management of government,” “Scientific view development and overall planning,” “Social management and community development” and “Differences in public and private management,” and planned courses such as “Strategic thinking and creative thinking” and “Modern world political status and China's development strategy” is to produce leaders with comprehensive vision. At the same time, lectures on “The structure and problems of public finance,” “City planning and protecting citizens’ benefit,” “City construction and reforming the investigation system” and “Spokesperson regulation and leading public opinion,” and field visits on “The operation, function and effects of stock exchanges,” “Development of private business,” “Informationalization and the Datongguan Project” and “Pluralization of property structure and introducing strategic investment” disseminate a range of practical and micro-level best practices in public management to leading cadres. The goal of both streams is to produce a new type of leading cadre, senior government managers and policy-makers who can lead by being practical, comprehensive and strategic. Classes at CELAP also test the adaptability and “psychological quality” of leading cadres.

Second, the CCP has absorbed the full extent of the leadership and governance challenges that it is now facing as a result of three decades of economic reform and economic globalization. The current campaign to modernize the CCP's leading cadres and bodies actually started in the later phase of the Third Generation leadership (late 1990s to early 2000s), when the CCP faced the challenges of sustaining the market transition and the potential pitfalls in international economic liberalization, such as the volatility of the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis. By the early 2000s, the Party elite had come to accept the defining managerial mantra in globalization: “innovate or perish.”

Over the past decade, the COD's Cadre Training Department has studied the managerial “best practices” of the public and private sectors of the West, and “new public management” reform models such as Britain's public sector innovation programmes, the Australian Public Service reform programme of the late 1990s, Canada's Public Service 2000 programme and the Clinton Administration's “reinvention” programme. The COD personnel training department learned that a prerequisite for leadership innovation in public policy and management is the normative or perceptual framework and supportive environment through which the main actors in any system orient themselves towards innovation in their work: in other words, creating an organizational culture and environment that is geared to supporting innovation.Footnote ¹⁸ It learned that it had to create an institutional space that is dedicated to grooming leadership “entrepreneurs,” managerial “first-adopters” and “diffusion agents.”

The COD came to the view that what was needed to meet the changing needs of political leadership was a leadership innovation “incubator.” The result was the creation of a new group of training academies – CELAP, CELAJ and CELAY – for leading cadres. The Party gave the new cadre training academies senior-level backing and protection. All three were put under the supervision of Zeng Qinghong, Vice-President of China from 2002 to 2007, an influential Party insider, power broker and a key figure in the Party rebuilding drive. He gave a landmark speech to leading provincial and ministerial officials at the Central Party School in 2005, and warned that the Party “must always work at maintaining its right to rule, and that this right was not preordained or pre-given. It has to be earned.” The speech was the precursor for the reorganization of the national leadership training system.

Zeng co-ordinated closely with Jiang and then with Hu in reorganizing and reconstructing the leadership training system. He was in an optimal position to orchestrate systemic reforms because he held comprehensive responsibility for Party organization and was also president of the CPS.Footnote ¹⁹ From this vantage point, Zeng could gauge the performance and capacities of the existing training organs, and identify both their limitations and their comparative advantages. Putting the three new academies under Zeng meant that they reported directly to him, and did not have to report through other organs at the top of the Party structure.

The China Pudong Cadre Academy (Zhongguo Pudong ganbu xueyuan 中国浦东干部学院) – or China Executive Leadership Academy, Pudong (CELAP) by its English name – stands out among the new cadre academies, and not only because it is architecturally stunning.Footnote ²⁰ It is exceptional because of its size and the nature of its training and research programmes. At its opening, CELAP had a total teaching staff of 154, and its initial goal was to have 200 staff by 2007. CELAP vice-president Xie Jieren explains: “The central government wants us to be creative, to get away from routine. So we choose young teachers instead of famous names who might have fixed ideas that are hard to change.”Footnote ²¹ CELAP's Chinese brochure adds:

Part-time teachers are responsible for special subject lectures and field study teaching. “They are usually famous scholars, government leaders and business executives.”Footnote ²³ The Academy also has strong scholar/teacher exchange partnerships with the Central Party School and its Party school system, and the China National School of Administration.

Much effort at CELAP has been put into strategizing how to create a learning environment in which discussions can be “open and wide-ranging.”Footnote ²⁴ Early indications are that the range of debate at CELAP is broad, including exchanges on pluralism, globalization, innovation and leadership in economic transition/societal change management, as well as more traditional issues in cadre training such as “The mission of the CCP,” “History of the Party's thought,” “Founding and mission of the CCP” and “Studying key Party plenary documents.” CELAP describes itself as helping leading cadres to “keep pace with the times” and “become more open.”Footnote ²⁵ CELAP's motto – its “vision” statement – is to be “an international, contemporary and innovative leadership academy at the cutting edge of leadership training.”

Of the three academies it is CELAP which is especially geared to the “spirit of reform and innovation.” In the words of the Pudong Academy's representatives:

It was explained that cadres from the interior go to CELAP, located in cosmopolitan Shanghai and Pudong, to “change their vision” (xi nao, da kai yianjing 洗脑, 打开眼睛, literally translated is “wash the brain, and open the eyes”) through first-hand exposure to the experience and models of China's most developed regions and international best practices and standards. The course load is one-third classroom lectures, one-third case studies and role-playing, and one-third on-site field studies. The academy attempts to integrate “on-the-spot” (that is, on-the-job) teaching, interactive exchange and other flexible teaching methods.

In contrast, at the Jinggangshan Academy (CELAJ), leading cadres, especially from the growth zones of coastal China, are taught Party history. The Executive Director of the Jinggangshan Academy explains: “These younger cadres from the high growth areas are brought back to the cradle of the birth of the Party, and they are taught the lessons of sacrifice that the Party has made for the Chinese people and the nation.”Footnote ²⁷ At the Yan'an Academy (CELAY), trainees receive specialized training on Party strategy and strategic analysis:

On the surface, it would appear that the most important distinction is that CELAP's raison d’être is promoting “innovation and openness” in leadership training and research whereas the other two academies are dedicated to instilling cadres with a sense of the Party's traditional mission, historical contributions and continuing importance.Footnote ²⁸ According to their own propaganda, all three academies “strive to foster and sustain strong, ethical and effective leadership for co-ordinated development of [China's] economy and society through the synergy of value education, capacity building and behaviour orientation” (zhongchen jiaoyu, nengli peiyang, xingwei shunlian 忠诚教育, 能力培养, 行为训练).

From the viewpoint of senior executives of the Pudong Academy, CELAP's governance structure is another dimension of its “innovative, open, contemporary and international” nature. CELAP has a “Board of Directors’ responsibility system” at the top of its structure. The Board consists of influential national leaders from key state organs (including the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Personnel), the Shanghai Municipal Government, a number of large-scale state enterprises (such as China Huaneng Group Corporation, Shanghai Baosteel Group Corporation and Shanghai Automotive Industrial Group Corporation), and other well-known institutions of higher learning inside China, including the Central Party School, the National School of Administration and Fudan University. CELAP's Board is said to reflect the new partnership in China between government and market actors. The next layer down – the Executive Committee, including the CELAP president and the Academic Department – reportedly receives strategic direction from the Board. The director-general of the COD is the chair of the CELAP Board and the president of CELAP, CELAJ and CELAY. CELAP's vice-presidents are part of the Executive Committee. Under the Board and the Executive Committee, CELAP has approximately 400 staff, working in eight departments (see Appendix). Both the Pudong Academy and the Central Party School also have a management system that consists of a team of vice-presidents (five from 2002 to 2007), including one executive vice-president who is de facto head of the Academy.

Innovate and Preserve

With the official talk of a transition from a “revolutionary party” to a “governing party”Footnote ²⁹ and Party re-building to reinforce its progressive nature (xianjianxing 先进性) and strengthen its existing governing capacity (zhizheng nengli 执政能力), it is easy to overlook the deeper objective behind the innovation drive: the preservation of CCP rule. CELAP officials emphasize that one can immediately sense the “openness and international orientation” of the Academy by its world-class design. However, the design actually reflects a careful balance that is important to the ruling authorities: “While the design is international in its origins, it also has a ‘distinctly Chinese character’.”Footnote ³⁰ The “big calligraphy table” design of the roof overhang for the main tower building symbolizes the table where the Confucian master sits to dispense wisdom and knowledge on harmony and the way of life to his pupils. The choice of red and the horizontal line of the roof design is said to appeal to the Chinese public and reflects the vast reach of the Chinese nation across the entire country, and the red not only conjures up traditional identification with happiness, but also “the flag and the revolution.”Footnote ³¹

The aesthetics of the Pudong Academy are revealing. A conscious balance is struck between innovation and conservation. While it is useful to contrast the character of CELAP with CELAJ and CELAY, it is no accident that the three academies are referenced as a group in the official Party narrative. They share a core curriculum that is developed under the guidance of their supervisory organ, the Central Organization Department. The three academies together offer what one observer described as “a curious blend of orthodox modernization, reinvented revolutionary tradition, and foreign exposure.”Footnote ³² They offer “experimental education” (tiyanshi jiaoyu 体验式教育) that blends the Party's revolutionary roots and its modernist future.Footnote ³³ This is the context behind Hu Jintao's congratulatory letter at the opening of the three academies: “[They] provide a valuable platform for leadership training”; “play an important role in ensuring that we uphold the Party's fine traditions and work ethic”; “improve our cadres’ ability in leading the socialist modernization”; and “strengthen the Party's governing capacity, and uphold the Party's advanced quality.”Footnote ³⁴ In the Chinese-language version of CELAP's official brochure, it says: “The establishment of the Pudong Cadre Academy, the Jinggangshan Cadre Academy [CELAJ] and the Yan'an Cadre Academy [CELAY] will help carry out the Party's glorious tradition and fine style of work, enhance the capacity of leading cadres, and strengthen the Party's progressiveness.”Footnote ³⁵

Recent literature in Chinese politics has grappled with the Party's dual agenda of reform and conservation. Dickson has described the Party's “institutional adaptation,” meaning that the CCP is trying to adjust its organizational character and personnel to the changing economic and social environment that has resulted from the reform programme.Footnote ³⁶ The analysis is on how the Party has reached out to dynamic new social groupings in Chinese society such as businessmen (“red entrepreneurs”), in order to co-opt these societal interests which could otherwise turn into an oppositional force.Footnote ³⁷ Shambaugh, in an important new book, examines how the Party has moved between “atrophy and adaptation” in rebuilding itself and trying to stave off its demise.Footnote ³⁸ Here, we describe the Party's desired effect as that of striving simultaneously for innovation and preservation of the Party's leading role in state and society.

The creation of the three new academies, at the same time and as a group, shows that the Party's strategists grasp that in order for the CCP to survive, it has to strike a careful balance between promoting change (reform and innovation) while protecting its own existence. The sustainability of the CCP in a changing environment requires dynamic equilibrium. CELAJ and CELAY are institutional means for ensuring that, even amid the reforms, younger leading cadres are fully inculcated into the norms, values, principles and traditions of the CCP. Even with CELAP, there is a conservative agenda behind the cutting-edge leadership training and research. While CELAP is an incubator of leadership innovation, its ultimate purpose is to ensure that the Party absorbs and transfers the necessary leadership modernization skills to ensure its continued rule.

CELAP has a protean institutional character, with one face pointing towards leadership innovation and systems reform, and another as a loyal Party organ. This dual character can be seen in the details of CELAP's training programmes. While the majority of the lecture courses and field visits are geared to exposing leading cadres to new governance approaches to a changing environment, there is a still healthy dose of Party strengthening courses such as “Mission of the CCP and developing the ruling capacity of the CCP,” “Reinforcing ruling capacity development, enhancing the CCP's ruling level,” “Governing the nation in accordance with the law, and building up socialist political civilization,” “Advancing with the times, evolution in the Party's thought,” “Value and strategic orientation of state-owned enterprise,” and field visits to observe “Chen Yun's thought on how to keep the Party at the leading edge.”

The protean nature of the Pudong Academy can also be seen in the rhetorical differences in the English and Chinese versions of its official brochure. For example, in the English-language version, the Academy describes itself to the “outside world” as “a Shanghai-based national institution funded by the central government. Our training is for high level leaders from government and top executives from the business community. We focus on social improvement and economic development.”Footnote ³⁹ In the Chinese-language version, which is aimed at a domestic audience, it states: “The Pudong Cadre Academy … is a national-level training base for the education of cadres managed by the Organization Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.” The Chinese brochure also says that the Pudong Academy operates according to the principle of “seeking truth from facts, keeping pace with the times, keeping to the style of hard struggle and plain living, and serving the people,” and that it “enables its trainees to enhance their understanding of reform and opening to the outside world, build up their faith in socialism with Chinese characteristics, enrich their knowledge on modern construction.”Footnote ⁴⁰

The preservation function of CELAP can be seen in its target trainees, leading cadres in the CCP's nomenklatura system. The COD has a direct role in selecting leading cadres and officials who are invited to Pudong for training (the General Political Department selects the military officers who attend).Footnote ⁴¹ It was explained to the author that “the COD gives CELAP a human resource training plan, which it is expected to implement. The COD, through the State budget, pays for the trainees’ costs at the Pudong Academy. The COD provides the overall curriculum guidelines, and curriculum development is led by CELAP's Academic Department.Footnote ⁴²

In establishing the Pudong Academy, the COD gave systematic consideration to which ranks of officials sit on which committees and hold which responsibilities, and who actually interacts with which group of officials. The goal was to identify groups of trainees who could act as managerial innovation entrepreneurs, first-adopters and diffusion agents. The COD considered how the nomenklatura and cadre management systems could be utilized to target select groups of leading cadres for training at the three academies: those best positioned to promote leadership innovation and managerial reform in their respective institutional settings.

CELAP trainers emphasize that their key trainees are “high-ranking and middle-level leading Party cadres and government officials, senior enterprise managers, military officials, and key technical cadres.” Pudong has a special mandate to provide training support especially for cadres from the less developed regions.Footnote ⁴³ Its teachers proudly noted that their training programmes have the “full support of China's very top leaders. And by November 2007, [we] had trained approximately 11,000 current and future leaders from across China.”

At the time of its opening in March 2005, 25 jurisdictions across China had signed agreements to take programmes at the Academy. In keeping with the Chinese government's campaign to “revitalize the north-east,” in mid-2005 CELAP created specialized training programmes for senior leaders from China's north-east region, specifically leading government officials in charge of financial management, mayors, ministers and provincial governors. It has developed similar specialized courses for leading officials from the north-west region (such as Gansu and Shaanxi) for the Western Development Campaign,Footnote ⁴⁴ including field visits to Shanghai's surrounding areas to study the “Phenomena of zero resource economy: growth from nothing.”

The Academy divides its training programmes into seven categories, with “target trainees” identified for each category. The categories are: subject research programmes (under one month); promotion programmes (one to three months); development and research programmes (one to three months); training for future leaders (three to six months); diploma courses (MPA, MBA), partnership linkage programmes; and tailored programmes. CELAP has attempted to rethink the training duration for each of the target trainee groups, based on the needs of the training involved, as well as the realistic amount of release-time that will be approved for the differing ranks of leaders. For example, in March 2005, straight after its opening, CELAP ran a training programme for local leaders from less developed areas which included 42 mayors from 28 provinces. The programme lasted six weeks, and focused on:

For “business leaders” in large state enterprises, CELAP has:

Little is known about the “tailored training programme” for officers from China's armed forces (jundui 军队). Senior Chinese military officials, selected by the Central Military Commission and the COD, are also enrolled for CELAP training. The course list shows that CELAP can offer both subject-research and specially tailored courses for Chinese military officials to examine the intersection between strategic and scientific innovation in executive management, planning, decision-making, and China's national and international security concerns. The fact that the Academy has listed senior military officials as one of their “target trainees” may be a sign that the CCP has identified the armed forces as a sector with strong inclinations towards the status quo which may become a source of blockage for innovation.Footnote ⁴⁷ What is known is that the Pudong Academy trains recently decommissioned officers who are making the transition to civilian life as enterprise managers.

While the creation of the new training academies may show that Party strategists have grasped that the survival of the CCP requires development of specialized training programmes to promote new leadership approaches (as well as reinforce continued Party rule), one could reasonably question whether the relatively short courses offered at the new academies can deliver this objective fully, given entrenched interests and the scale of the challenge.Footnote ⁴⁸

Innovative Outcomes

In gauging what actually constitutes the “newness” of the curriculum and training at the three COD Academies, especially CELAP, it can be suggested that the research and training programmes are advancing what could be called China's own unique international best practices and lessons. Senior officials at the Pudong Academy explain that “CELAP's approach to internationalization is not just about absorbing important international or worldly lessons. Rather, the Pudong Cadre Academy teaches China's own experiences and models of internationalization” (Zhongguo zezi de guojihua jingyian he moshi 中国自己的国际化经验和模式). This includes profiling Chinese joint ventures with major foreign multi-nationals, and Chinese state firms that have major global operations, including Shanghai GM, Baosteel and Shanghai Tobacco Corporation. CELAP courses that disseminate China's own international lessons include “WTO regulation and open policy,” “International merger opportunities for Chinese corporations” and “Strategy and preparation for China's corporate multi-nationalization.”

CELAP has developed connections and partnership agreements with a number of the Fortune 500 companies. In April 2006, for example, Siemens became the first foreign corporation to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the Pudong Academy for a long-term partnership. The parties agreed to develop joint training programmes and share training resources.Footnote ⁴⁹ Siemens executives give presentations at CELAP on how their worldly expertise can be transferred to China, and also on how the German multinational has had to adjust to “China's national character” (guoqing 国情) and local market needs; in short, the “Sinification” of Siemen's international operations inside China.

The selection of Shanghai and Pudong district as the site for the academy has aimed to showcase China's and more specifically Shanghai's internationalization experience. Shanghai's modernity is described by one CELAP official as “a synthesis between the domestic and international practices that have combined to create something new within China's own reform and opening experience.” As one leading faculty member explained:

CELAP's research institutes gather information to profile “China's own innovative leadership lessons and governance models” from Shanghai and its surrounding lower Yangzi River Basin area. The key research institutes include the Centre for Case Development and Research, Institute for Leadership Studies, Institute for Leadership Education and Institute of Leadership Psychology. Working together with international partners, CELAP has recently completed new research projects on corporate social responsibility, circular economy,Footnote ⁵¹ Yangshan Deep Harbour Development Case Study and the role of local government in public health provision.

CELAP has embraced its role in formulating and promoting “China's internationalization experience” by establishing a China Reform and Opening Research Institute (Zhongguo gaige/kaifang yanjiusuo 中国改革/开放研究所), whose mission is to:

The CELAP official wanted to clarify, however, that:

CELAP has hosted large groups of foreign trainees, including from Africa, as part of the Chinese government's new foreign aid programmes for the Global South.

The other dimension of CELAP's unique internationalism is its heavy emphasis on informal international networking, through less structured modes of sharing relevant knowledge, such as hosting international conferences and experts’ meetings, workshops and guest lectures. These gatherings are portrayed as platforms for lessons on leadership innovation; as “win-win exchanges” with foreign experts. They are said to offer foreign and Chinese companies an “effective vehicle to forge relationships with the Chinese government and business leaders.” The “face-to-face communication” helps “open new network channels” and fosters “mutual understanding.”Footnote ⁵⁴ The Academy offers companies the opportunity to “share [their] experience and success with [CELAP] students by helping to develop field study and case study materials.” This is supposed to be a good way to showcase a firm's operations to target trainees, who are usually domestic decision-makers, and a way to tap into CELAP's “good working relationship with China's mass media.”Footnote ⁵⁵ Its consultation and training services are said to provide “networking opportunities” for international partners to exchange ideas with its faculty, administration and trainees, many of whom are high- or middle-level Chinese officials or business leaders.

The Pudong Academy's main effort in informal international networking has been its biannual leadership forum, which is billed as a “high-level and open international forum … for the purpose of studying and discussing the construction of leadership talent as well as the theory of leadership science.”Footnote ⁵⁶ CELAP brings together, by invitation only, leading academics, government leaders, and Chinese and foreign corporate executives. Close to 200 participants attended each of the two conferences to date. The first (25–26 March 2005) was entitled “Globalization and leadership science under the background of globalization,” and the second (19–20 October 2007) was “Leadership-transformation-innovation.” Notable attendees have included Hu Maoyuan, CEO and Party secretary of Shanghai Automotive Industry Group Corporation, Nick Morris, former CEO of ACIL Tasman (an Australian economic consulting company), Guo Ming, inspector general of human resources (Greater China region) at Coco-Cola Beverage Corporation Limited (China Operations), Liu Guosheng, vice-chair and Party secretary of Baosteel, Xia Xingyou, the education chief at China's National Defence University, and Frederic Eckhard, ex-Speaker for former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. Academics were from leading Chinese and international schools. More than 40 mayors of Chinese cities participated in the first conference as part of their CELAP training. At the second conference, trainees from the “Promotion-oriented programme for young senior leaders,” “Programme of mayors and Party secretaries of municipal CCP committees,” “Programme for director generals on building up resource-saving and environment-friendly society” and “Programme for western China leaders” were in attendance. Some of the international participants have noted, however, that the networking opportunities have so far remained more of a promise than a reality, and that building sustainable contacts with Chinese leaders and participants is more complicated for the international participants than is portrayed.

Not Just a Party School

It is telling that although leadership training has traditionally been the purview of the Party School system, led by the CPS,Footnote ⁵⁷ the CCP leadership still went ahead to create CELAP. The origins of that decision lie in discussions at the CCP's Leading Small Group on Party Affairs in the early 2000s about the need to diversify beyond the traditional cadre schools, and to develop new training programmes to meet the needs of the changed environment. According to Party officials, the COD was dissatisfied with the training system but it was very difficult to change it as long as the Party School remained the repository of leadership training. The CPS has traditionally enjoyed a degree of autonomy from the COD in determining the components of the training curriculum for leading cadres, and the Academic Affairs Department of the CPS claims that it has the “authority to determine the training priorities and curriculum guidelines for all training programmes inside the entire national Party School system.”Footnote ⁵⁸ Hence, if and when the COD wanted to influence the leadership training programmes or the curriculum at the Party School, it had to work through the Liaison Office of the Organization Department inside the CPS. This has meant that the COD has to work through an additional layer of administration, and could only exercise direct influence over the CPS training programmes at high-level strategic planning between the COD and the CPS.

The decision to diversify the training system paved the way for State Council approval in 2003 of the first Master of Public Administration programme in China, jointly taught by the National School of Administration and Peking University. This was followed by a proliferation of such programmes in other Chinese universities. The new programmes drew directly on foreign business schools and schools of public administration as their models. More to the point was the creation of CELAP and the other two COD leadership Academies. A senior CELAP representative explained that: “China is facing a new situation in the world, with globalization and WTO entry. The key issue for us [the CCP and CELAP] is how to train China's new leaders to face these new challenges.”Footnote ⁵⁹ Therefore the Pudong Academy was created as an “executive leadership academy that is international, contemporary and innovative.” He added: “In contrast, the Central Party School and the National School of Administration (NSA) take a more traditional (chuantong 传统) approach to training leaders. There have been some changes at these institutions, but these two Schools are not enough.”

The diversification decision is notable because of the amount of change that has been introduced into the CPS and the NSA, especially in developing training materials on new public management techniques and for responding to economic reform and global pressures. For example, around the time of China's WTO accession, the CPS developed a new curriculum on what was then the “hot topic” of how to adjust to the potential downside effects of WTO entry, and integrated this into its short and long-term training plan. The CPS re-organized its Institute for Strategy, turning it into the Institute for International Strategy, and initiated a guest lecture series for foreign CEOs and senior government leaders to give presentations.Footnote ⁶⁰ Starting in the late 1990s, the NSA established new courses on the public management of economic reform pressures, including WTO-related training.Footnote ⁶¹

Wibowo and Fook have noted that the transition from central planning to a market economy has had a significant impact on the training of cadres. The Party Schools have had to adapt to the new developments, “because cadres now need a whole new set of knowledge, different from that of the past.”Footnote ⁶² High-ranking cadres need a modern and practical knowledge set to help them interpret the fast-changing world; they must gain specific theoretical knowledge about the nature of the Chinese economy that is undergoing dramatic changes in a “globalized age”; they require new approaches to managing society, and can no longer rely on command and control. A number of these reforms were outlined in Relevant Opinions on Further Deepening the Reform of Cadre Education in the Central Party School (Guanyu jin yi bu shenhua zhongyang dangxiao ganbu jiaoyu gaige de ruogan yijian 关于进一步深化中央党校干部教育改革的若干意见), which was jointly issued by the COD, the Central Propaganda Department and the CPS.Footnote ⁶³

The creation of CELAP reflects the leadership's recognition of the difficulty of ensuring that China pushes ahead with managerial and leadership innovation. After more than 60 years’ rule, the tendency is for traditional patterns of behaviour to become locked in, so that reforming the existing training institutions would not be enough. New resources and focused attention had to be given to stave off “organization involution.”Footnote ⁶⁴ The creation of CELAP is telling for what it says about the depth of need for innovation in the CCP's leading ranks, given the advances in “modern and practical knowledge” at the existing training schools from 2000 to 2005.Footnote ⁶⁵ It also reveals the power of the COD relative to the existing training organs, formally of equal rank inside the Party hierarchy, and specifically the “higher” Party school. The COD has taken the initiative to press ahead with creating the three Academies, but it has done so not as an independent player.Footnote ⁶⁶ It has acted with the blessing of the leading group for Party affairs. The creation of CELAP is, not surprisingly, seen differently by some inside the CPS, as merely a “grab for resources” on the part of the Organization Department,Footnote ⁶⁷ or as Zeng Qinghong promoting his own interests.

By establishing the three academies, the COD has cut into the importance and prestige of the CPS,Footnote ⁶⁸ and gradually relegated its leadership training responsibilities to indoctrination on the “correct” Party line and as an inner Party think-tank for ideological rejuvenation.Footnote ⁶⁹ While Party School training continues to play a role in raising the overall competence of Party and state cadres,Footnote ⁷⁰ its focus is increasingly on re-instilling political integrity, ensuring cadres’ adherence to the principle of “serving the people whole-heartedly,” and upholding the “important concept of the ‘Three Represents’.”Footnote ⁷¹

The de facto division of responsibilities is the result of intra-Party contestation in which the COD, backed by the Party leadership, is exerting greater influence over the leadership training plan. The COD controls a large portion of the groups of leading cadres who have been sent abroad for executive management training at American, Canadian, Australian and European universities over the past decade. Its influence is also shown by the new in-rotation training programmes for leading Party and government cadres in which they receive part of their mandatory training at the CPS (Party policy and ideology), and part at CELAP (innovative leadership approaches and styles). In addition, the COD plays a lead role over the CPS and the NSA in co-organizing international leadership training programmes with international donors such as the UNDP.

The fact that the Pudong Academy is directly under the supervision of the COD means that it shares its organizational prestige. It administers the cadre management system for the Central Committee, and continues to manage the Party's nomenklatura system, the interlocking directorate through which the Party exercises control over who attains senior leadership positions, not only in the Party but also in the government, judicial system, schools and universities, enterprises, research establishments, religious organizations, museums, libraries, hospitals, and so forth.Footnote ⁷² Although some observers have suggested that the COD's capacities to control the behaviour of the top level of cadres directly has weakened over time,Footnote ⁷³ it is still the case that, “to a large extent, [the COD] influences who will get ahead in China and thus the types of individuals that will run the system.”