China's Party Congress

Guoguang Wu is Professor of Political Science, Professor of History, and Chair in China and Asia-Pacific Relations at the University of Victoria, Canada. He was involved in China's Party Congress as a policy advisor to then Party Chief Zhao Ziyang and a member of the draft group of the Central Committee's report to the Congress. The author, co-author and editor of twenty-two books in both English and Chinese, he is also a contributor to journals including Asian Survey, China Quarterly, Comparative Political Studies, the Journal of Contemporary China, the Pacific Review, Social Research, and Third World Quarterly.

'Why has China had such high popular legitimacy (according to the best available indicators) when its citizenry have had so little to say about how they are governed? In this brilliant, pioneering study of the National Party Congress, Guoguang Wu shows how by shrewdly using 'institutional manipulation' the CCP can present a democratic showcase while keeping the levers of power hidden. Thus the 'hollow' but 'holy' Party Congress actually proves more effective at building popular consensus than the representative legislatures after which it was modeled.' Lowell Dittmer, University of California, Berkeley

• 1. Introduction: China's Party Congress as the theatre of power; 2. Institutions manipulated, legitimacy ritualized: a theory of authoritarian legitimization; 3. 'Meeting for unity and victory': the political art of running the Party Congress; 4. Between political principle and the practice of power: the making and remaking of the Party platform; 5. Norms versus operations: Party constitution in political configuration; 6. Elections as instruments of autocracy: the essence and nuisance of formalistic voting; 7. Conclusion.