Final Exam: Chinese Politics Essay

 Part one: Research evaluation

The quality custom essay writing research article uses the secondary data collection, specifically the review design. The purpose is to investigate how corruption and selective policy implementation affect the exercise of political power by people occupying administrative positions in the rural county of Benghai, Anhui Province. The researcher gets data from secondary sources that are readily available, e.g. by reviewing previous studies. An example of a secondary source from where Smith derives data is the website of Benghai government. The researcher uses this website to get data on the portfolio of the party’s standing committee members as at 2007. Also, he uses the same website to get data the portfolio of the lower-ranking county leaders. Smith’s approach to research entails organizing his descriptive data under topics and reviewing different sources to derive findings.

The review design has its strengths and weakness. A major strength of using the review design is bringing together of findings already made without unnecessary repetition. It is suitable when researching a problem that other researchers have already investigated. In addition, it is time-saving and cost-effect design. The researcher reviews findings without doing fieldwork or practically gathering data from the field. The main limitation is high chances of bias. The researcher may decide to select only the previous studies with findings that support his hypothesis, but ignore the ones with contrary information. Furthermore, there is no connection between a researcher who uses the design and the team that collects data. Another challenge is that most countries, China included, lack a registry for determining previously collected data or making such information public. Based on these limitations, it is difficult to believe that a researcher who gathers data using the review design makes accurate findings. The researcher unknowingly carries over the mistakes that the primary investigators made. The accuracy of such findings is highly questionable. I, therefore, do not believe the findings of the article.

Part two: Elite Politics

Promotion of the Communist Party officials is an issue that has attracted scholarly interest. Scholars have formed two camps of arguments. The first camp has scholars who argue that promotion of the party’s officials is based on merit. This group of scholars argue that the cadre system that the CPP uses to evaluate its leaders before promoting them has evolved to the extent that they compete with each other fairly to get promoted. However, the second camp opposes this proposition, arguing that factional ties play a major role for one to get promotion. The second group of scholars are more convincing than their counterparts. Promotion of the CPP officials is not merit-based as such, but factional ties have a lot of influence as research evidence shows that connection of officials to top leadership plays the major role; though educational qualification and revenue collection at the provincial level are other determinants.

Connection of party officials to the top leadership is the main influencer of promotion. According to evidence from the study by Shih, Adolph, and Liu, a link misses between growth performance of the party’s regional administrators and the ranks they hold at the CPP. This means that the officials do not hold ranks according to their contribution to the party’s growth or ranking is not merit-based. There is no variation of rules at different levels of the party’s governance. The study’s results are uniform between the party’s regional and national levels. Its evidence shows that the party’s officials who served at the ACC, CC, or Politburo levels did not get promotion out of merit or based on their performance, but they got it because of connection to the top leadership. Apparently, connection to top leadership is the main determiner of promotion of party officials at the regional and national levels.

Education, growth contribution, revenue performance, gender, and experience are issues under merit considered to affect promotion. However, the study found that these factors only appear to affect promotion at the face level. The researchers investigated promotion of the party’s officials during the 16th convention. They found that most officials who sought promotion at the convention strived for college degrees; nonetheless, it not give them any added advantage when it came to actual promotion. Similarly, the study found that only a dismal number of officials who collected a lot of revenue at the regional level got promotions. The study found little link between promotion and merit; but it found connection with top leadership as the main factor for promotion.

In conclusion, the officials of CPP, both at the regional and national levels, get promotion based on their connection to top leadership than merit. Although merit is thought to be the factor that determines promotion, its effect is only at the face level. In actual sense, the officials who are well connected get promoted, as little relationship exists between promotion and indicators of merit like education, revenue collection, and experience.

Part three: State-society relations

Different factors are perceived to threaten the continuity of the CPP regime’s rule in China. One of the contemporary scholars who have developed theories to explain the ‘foreseeable’ collapse of the CPP is David Shambaugh. Shambaugh’s China Collapse Theory compares the factors in China to those that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Upon such comparison, Shambaugh explains that China’s collapse, like the USSR’s, will be as a result of systemic problems that are rooted in its history. Uygur separatism in Xinjiang poses the greatest threat to the continuity of CPP’s rule, more than the problems of gender imbalance and food safety. The separatism agenda is deeply rooted in China’s history, it is fuelled by both religion and ethnicity, and it is likely to spread beyond Xinjiang.

Uygur’s separatism is deeply rooted in China’s history, and it has not ended due to its religious and ethnicity influences. Davis discusses that Uygur’s separatism began in 1990, and it has grown over time. Chinese soldiers attacked Xinjiang in 2007, January. Eighteen people lost their lives as suspected terrorists. Most of Uygur’s occupants are of Turkish origin. They are also overwhelmingly Muslim. The indication is that China’s attack against Uygur is seen as an attack against the Muslim community and of Turkish origin. Consequently, the separatism problem is complicated because it has religious and ethnic influences.

There are high chances of the separatism agenda spreading to other parts of China. According to Davis, the main reason Beijing fears Uygur’s separatism is the fact that it can easily spread to places like Taiwan, Mongolia, and Tibet. The risk of its spread is real due to its historical complexities. Additionally, social disparities, rising poverty, political grievances, and unemployment, which are problems associated with the CPP regime, will also strengthen the movement. These factors will cause discontent among the economic elite, who are likely to turn their support to the separatism agenda to pave way for collapse of the CPP. Shambaugh’s China Collapse Theory identifies the economic elite’s discontent as a strong factor behind CPP’s collapse. Other world powers that are conspiring against CPP’s rule are also likely to support Uygur’s separatism. Shambaugh also identifies endless corruption as a predictor of CPP’s collapse, yet this is part of the agenda of Uygur’s separatism. Evidently, it is the factor with the greatest threat of ending CPP’s rule.

In conclusion, Uygur’s separatism agenda is the biggest threat against CPP’s rule because it is deeply rooted in historical problems, religion and ethnicity encourage it, and it is likely to expand to other areas. China has not been able to end Uygur’s separatism over long time, despite using violence to challenge the agenda. Shambaugh’s theory identifies factors that will bring CPP’s rule to an end, yet most of the factors are part of the separatism agenda. China’s failure to solve historical problems like corruption, unemployment, rising poverty, and social disparities will strengthen the idea of Uygur’s separatism, and it will lead to CPP’s collapse when it spreads to other places and grows in magnitude.