Anne-Marie Brady is one of the top senior scholars researching the Chinese Communist Party's propaganda apparatus and how it practises thought management. In this edited volume, China's Thought Management, Brady gathers seven analysts – He Yong, Valérie Niquet, Ji Fengyuan, Nicolai Volland, Wang Juntao, James To and Elaine Jeffreys – to join her in focusing on the post-Mao era, especially after June 4, 1989.
The question asked in the book is, how did the CCP regime restore its credibility after the Beijing massacre in an era of physical mobility, international travel, polarization, corruption and the de-legitimation of Mao-style movements? Brady's conclusion is that the single-party dictatorship has succeeded in restoring its legitimacy. Her question then is, how?
Putting aside the important impact of continuing high economic growth on legitimacy, Brady et al. focus on thought work. Among the topics covered are the cultural structure, the military, Chinese abroad, the reform of propaganda work, the Beijing Olympics, Confucianism and a particular campaign of Hu Jintao's. As is the norm in many edited volumes, the strength of the chapters varies greatly. Brady's introductory chapters are outstanding.
The major conclusion is that Party control is as strong as ever. The propaganda persuades the populace to think of the Party-state as equivalent to the nation or the protector of the nation needed both to save the nation from alien enemies and also to provide modern public services to the people. In the dominant propaganda discourse, the real and often corrupt CCP with its monopoly of arbitrary political power virtually disappears. The ruling single-party dictatorship and its propaganda apparatus, according to Brady, have become ever more sophisticated and effective in framing the national discourse. I am not so persuaded that people's real world experiences can be negated by the state's efforts at thought management.
Alternative perspectives are not examined. Some argue that China under the leadership of Jiang Zemin was more open, while Hu Jintao has been more repressive against Tibetans, Uyghurs, rights lawyers and promoters of human dignity. In this perspective, politics is more important than the administration of thought work. Therefore, how Xi Jinping decides is crucial for the future. Still, the book's conclusion that there is no natural, gradual democratization underway is persuasive.
In another perspective, also not examined in the book, the effectiveness of the CCP's thought management is not long-lasting. An event such as an economic crash or a major military defeat could delegitimize the regime. Still, the CCP regime today, the contributors to this volume establish, is successful in persuading most Han Chinese that the numerous and diverse courageous opponents of the cruel CCP tyranny are actually selfish and traitorous tools of foreigners who do not want China and the Chinese to succeed.
All of these tendencies showing the success of thought management, the book persuasively argues, came to the fore in 2008 during the pre-Beijing Olympics torch relay. All around the world, from Seoul to Paris, good people who cared about human rights went to the PRC's torch relay parades. They both embraced the rights of Tibetans suffering from degrading Han CCP apartheid practices and also protested the CCP regime's support of the mass murderer in Sudan who has been indicted as a war criminal.
These peaceful human rights protesters, however, were seen even by many Chinese overseas as tools of anti-China forces who defamed the CCP to hurt China. These Chinese raged at and attacked, at times violently, the international supporters of human rights. The CCP's thought management work had proved, from the perspective of the CCP, a great success. The regime was delighted by the impact of its propaganda apparatus. How and why this thought work is carried out and why it succeeds is what is detailed by Brady and the other contributors in China's Thought Management.
