Cheng Li is head of the Brookings Institute's John L. Thornton China Center, so is well positioned to write a book on Chinese policymaking and think tanks. The Power of Ideas provides a very readable overview of many of the key players and influential voices in China's policy debates. The book is an edited volume of Li's work, consisting mostly of articles and chapters published elsewhere in English-language publications, or translations of Chinese-language commentaries and interviews, published over a seven-year period, 2009 to 2015. The introductory chapter opens with a question raised in 2005 by 94-year old space scientist Qian Xuesen in a meeting with then Premier Wen Jiabao: “Why are Chinese schools not able to foster outstanding intellectual giants?” The book then goes on, not so much to answer the question, as to undermine it. China does indeed contain many great thinkers, many of them public intellectuals actively engaged in China's key policy debates, playing an influential role in the trajectory of China's reforms.
Li not only introduces a large number of prominent Chinese intellectuals to an English-language readership, he also emphasizes how, through the promotion of “new-type think tanks” – a policy drive which has received particular impetus under the leadership of Xi Jinping – their role in policymaking has risen in importance. Xi's promotion of think tanks, many of which are housed in China's top-ranked universities, is intended to produce a system whereby the innovative ideas of creative thinkers can circumvent China's rigid bureaucratic institutions and find a direct channel to state leaders. By drawing attention both to the dynamism of Chinese debates, and to recent attempts by China's leaders to harness these intellectual talents in the service of policymaking, Li provides a timely and refreshing counterpoint to the tired stereotype of Chinese policymaking as top-down and overly ideological, and to the commonly heard criticism among Anglo-American pundits, that Chinese think tanks do little more than “tell the Emperor what he wants to hear.”
Through its discussion of individual scholars and the think tanks they belong to, the book contains many helpful overviews of key policy debates over the past decade, including in matters economic, political, legal and ethical. Discussions of individual scholars are based largely on readings of their works, often accompanied by in-depth personal interviews by the author. At times, this is supplemented with information about the scholars’ personal histories and educational backgrounds, providing a socio-historical context for the current debates taking place. There are many useful tables providing clear information about top-ranked think tanks, who works where, where they were educated and so forth.
The main shortfall of the book, in my view, is perhaps a side-effect of how fast Chinese politics has changed over the past five or six years. The several references throughout the book, for example, to China's system of “collective leadership” and “inner-Party democracy,” both signs of progress, argues Li, since the days of “strongman leaders” like Mao and Deng, seem somewhat out of date since the dramatic rise to power of Xi Jinping. Similarly, Li is no doubt correct to draw Western readers’ attention to the important work of Yu Keping, an influential liberal thinker and author of Minzhu shi ge hao dongxi (Democracy is a Good Thing), which appeared in its original form in 2006 and catalyzed a long running set of discussions in China known as the “democracy wave” debates. However, given recent media reports of ideological campaigns in universities against the dissemination of liberal ideas, and university professors fired for advocating free speech, the reader is left wondering where this “democracy wave” is now. The hailing of Yu Keping's thesis as reflecting a “new school of thought emerging from the Chinese leadership” (p. 100) no doubt made sense when the chapter first appeared in 2009, but appears somewhat incongruent in the current political climate where surveillance and social order are evidently prioritized above discussions of democratic reform.
Many of Li's more cautious observations remain pertinent today, however. In chapter six, “China's new think tanks: where officials, entrepreneurs, and scholars interact,” Li identifies a tripartite elite constituted by government officials, business leaders and public intellectuals. With some prominent think tanks acting as clubs where these powerful individuals can interact and cohere as a group, Li warns that a “wicked coalition” (p. 227) could be forming that may begin to act in its own interests, particularly with respect to real estate. Li's observation here, of the dangers of prominent think tanks with increased amounts of private funding coming to represent the interests of wealthy social classes, was particularly prescient at the time of this chapter's original publication in 2009. The political power of real estate in megacities such as Beijing, for example, and the resulting draconian policies by the local state towards migrants living there, is perhaps even more obvious today than it was then. Going forward, whether or not China's think tanks will succeed in reflecting the different and competing interests of an increasingly stratified society, or whether policymaking will be increasingly skewed towards the interests of wealthy elites and entrepreneurs is, as Li makes clear, one of the most pressing questions for China's newly emerging policymaking system.
This accessible volume makes useful reading for students of Chinese politics, and both specialists and non-specialists seeking a better understanding of the world of Chinese policymaking.
