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Cadre Country: How China became the Chinese Communist Party

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Essentially, the Party has been able to justify itself as the key driver of prosperity, improved social service delivery, and stability. This framing has resonated with enough Chinese ‘outsiders’, who have seen improvements in their quality of life compared to previous generations. Such ‘lived experience’ helps to justify the Party’s claim that change now is too risky. However, China’s poor economic growth in 2022, in part because of the CCP’s approach to COVID-19, may pose a significant challenge to Xi’s legitimacy. Since the founding of the Communist Party in China just over a century ago, there is much the country has achieved. But who does the heavy lifting in China? And who walks away with the spoils? Cadre Country places the spotlight on the nation's 40 million cadres - the managers and government officials employed by the ruling Communist Party to protect its great enterprise. This group has captured the culture and wealth of China, excluding the voices of the common citizens of this powerful and diverse country. John Fitzgerald is an Emeritus Professor at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. He served for five years as China Representative of The Ford Foundation in Beijing (2008-2013) before heading the Asia-Pacific philanthropy studies program at Swinburne University. His books include Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia, awarded the Ernest Scott Prize of the Australian Historical Association, and Awakening China: Politics, Culture and Class in the Nationalist Revolution, awarded the Joseph Levenson Prize of the US Association for Asian Studies. His latest book is Cadre Country: How China became the Chinese Communist Party (2022). China’s communist party regards itself as engaged in a global information war. In his new book, Cadre Country, historian John Fitzgerald probes some of the key stories the party tells to advance its cause. In this talk, he focuses on one story that resonates in China and internationally, China’s ‘Century of Humiliation.’ Where does this term come from, when it is deployed, and why? Fundamentally, Cadre Country seeks to scrutinise the CCP, its political organisation, and its key claims, including the centrality of the Party to China’s political stability, culture, economic growth, and that foreigners wary of China are ignorant or prejudiced. For example, he rejects the claim of the CCP and its advocates that the alleviation of poverty since the 1980s is due to the CCP’s reforms. Rather, he makes the case that it was due to the CCP finally loosening its grip over the Chinese people. The Party justifies its rule by emphasising how its leaders are selected on merit (and are thus responsible for economic expertise) rather than by democratic election (which the CCP sees as dangerous). Fitzgerald critiques this narrative as simply a way for the Party to entrench its system of political exclusion.

In the traditional account, China is a normal sovereign nation, one that happens to be ruled by a communist party, though it has reformed to enable significant capital markets to grow rich. It denies the public a say on the issues, yet there are clear responsibilities for the leadership (such as economic growth) which drive the political landscape. Is Fitzgerald's account correct? I honestly don't know. I am not a China expert, nor even if I read 100 books like this could I be. He is one however, and even if it's wrong in parts, or pushes the line too far, it's a very helpful and compelling insight into the PRC. If this thesis is right, then other countries need to have - if I can be somewhat cheeky here - a 'Two China' policy. That is, a sense in every engagement with the PRC, whether they are dealing with the Party-State or the People-State, and how their actions may be interpreted or reflected by these two nations within the one entity we call 'China'.

In October 2022, at the 20 th Communist Party Congress, China’s President Xi Jinping cemented his power to win a third term of leadership and become the most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. To understand the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), its political organisation, and how it has maintained its grip on power, China historian John Fitzgerald’s 2022 book Cadre Country is a great place to start.

John Fitzgerald is an historian of China and the Chinese diaspora. He headed the Asia-Pacific Centre for Social Investment and Philanthropy at Swinburne University after serving five years as China Representative of The Ford Foundation in Beijing (2008-13). From 2015 to 2017 he served as President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. His recent books include Cadre Country: How China became the Chinese Communist Party (2022), Taking the Low Road: China’s Influence in Australia’s States and Territories (edited, 2022), and Chinese Diaspora Charity and the Cantonese Pacific, 1850–1949 (edited with Hon-ming Yip, 2020). Earlier books include Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia (2007), awarded the Ernest Scott Prize of the Australian Historical Association, and Awakening China: Politics, Culture and Class in the Nationalist Revolution (1997), awarded the Joseph Levenson Prize of the US Association for Asian Studies. He is a graduate of the University of Sydney (BA 1976), Nanjing University (Language Cert 1977) and ANU (PhD 1983), and studied at UW Madison as a Fulbright post-doctoral fellow (1988). It takes decades of patient observation, experience and study of China to produce a book like this. Cadre Country is a must read for specialists and the general public.’ – Anita Chan, Australian National University Award-winning historian John Fitzgerald focuses on the stories the Communist Party tells about itself, exploring how China works as an authoritarian state, and revealing Beijing's monumental propaganda productions as a fragile edifice built on questionable assumptions.In Fitzgerald's account, almost all of these claims are wrong. The title 'Cadre Country' one realises by the end of the book, should be taken literally. 'China' (a word only the CPC is allowed to use), is a 'defacto political nation' of around 40 million party loyalists, and ruling elite families. This 'Party-State' conquered the Chinese people in 1949 and remains, akin to a colonial regime, superimposed on top of the other nation. It rules by and for itself. It lives virtually distinct in life, from the services used and the food available to it, from the other nation. That second nation, the 'People-State' of 1.4 billion Chinese people are not simply prevent from having a say in how 'China' runs, they are not even part of the same system. Fitzgerald aims to bring an up-to-date account into the public sphere regarding the on-the-ground realities of China and the CCP’s rule, in comparison to work that often stays within insular academic and elite debates. This work forms part of Fitzgerald’s ongoing criticism of the pragmatic approach that Australian elites have taken in promoting deep engagement with China to develop economic opportunities while ignoring the more authoritarian, nationalistic, and ideological path of Xi’s China. John Fitzgerald is an historian of China and the Chinese diaspora. He headed the Asia-Pacific Centre for Social Investment and Philanthropy at Swinburne University after serving five years as China Representative of The Ford Foundation in Beijing (2008-13). From 2015 to 2017 he served as President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. His recent books include Cadre Country: How China became the Chinese Communist Party (2022), Taking the Low Road: China’s Influence in Australia’s States and Territories (edited, 2022), and Chinese Diaspora Charity and the Cantonese Pacific, 1850–1949 (edited with Hon-ming Yip, 2020). Dong Wang is distinguished professor of history and director of the Wellington Koo Institute for Modern China in World History at Shanghai University (since 2016), a member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and an elected Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland.

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