1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 4 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 3 Managing human resources to sustain the one-party rule Lance L.P. Gore The study of the post-Cold-War Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been inevitably framed by the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. The obsession of the feld has been the survivability of the CCP. The “pending collapse” of the CCP regime has been a perennial topic of heated debates. The most dramatic state- ment of this thesis is Gordon Chang’s book (2001 and 2012) The Coming Col- lapse of China. 1 The most recent death knell is sounded by David Shambaugh, who believes the system will crack under the weight of societal demands on the one hand and the neo-orthodoxy of Xi Jinping on the other. 2 If Shambaugh’s proclamation has been affected by emotion and value judgement, MacFarquhar is more analytic; he points out that several of the historical factors that con- tributed to the CCP’s stability no longer exist – charismatic leaders, the ideo- logical glue, the integrity of party organizations and so on. 3 The failure of the CCP to collapse 25 years on prompted a growing literature seeking to explain the “authoritarian resilience.” Acknowledging signifcant organizational atrophy, Shambaugh also observes the CCP’s conscious learning of the Soviet Union lessons and extensive effort at adaptation. 4 Nathan traces the authoritarian resilience to the institutionalization of political life after Mao. He points to the wide range of incremental reforms such as local elections, institu- tionalization of elite succession, legal and mass media reforms, and others that enhance the level of the regime’s acceptability to the people. 5 Walder highlights the continued strength of the core communist institutions – the basic structure of the party-state is stable. 6 Richard McGregor, Zheng Yongnian and many others see the CCP’s staying power through the elaborate personnel control exercised by the Party and its organizational ubiquity and prowess. 7 Heilman and Perry argue that the CCP’s accomplishment so far is rooted in the creative adaptation of key elements of China’s revolutionary heritage. 8 These scholars all agree that the CCP has to some extent successfully adapted itself to new challenges. This chapter zeroes in on the CCP’s control and management of human resources to evaluate its staying power. The underlying assumption is that the sustainability of the CCP’s one-party rule depends to a large extent on how suc- cessfully it can control, tame and utilize vital human resources for the moderni- zation project from which it derives its legitimacy. Here, human resources are more broadly defned as including a meritocratic political elite and skills in both 1156_03_The Chinese Communist Party.indd 51 17/6/19 07:08:08