The logic and limits of the Party’s social management approach in maintaining stability: lessons from Bismarck

Following the leadership transition in Autumn 2012, Politburo Standing Committee member Wang Qishan recommended party members to read the book The Old Regime and the Revolution by Alexis de Tocqueville. Reflecting on the causes of the French revolution, Tocqueville argued in his seminal work that a social revolution was more likely when living conditions are improving and dissatisfaction with the old regime is rising. Chinese academic He Qinglian has argued “[Wang Qishan] meant to warn the ruling clique that, according to the Tocqueville Law, reform might not be fun, ‘the most dangerous time for a bad regime is not when it is most evil, but is when it begins to reform’, the so-called ‘reform’ is no different from seeking death”. He Qinglian further elaborated “from this we could guess that for the next five (or even ten) years, China's political direction would be maintaining the status quo, making minor repairs here and there, insisting not to go back to the old path (Mao's path) or walk down the evil path (democratization).” If He’s analysis is correct, and Wang

and its key functions were communication and propaganda as well as limited interest articulation. The second representative body of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) played an important role in creating a united front.
Its democratic parties were not autonomous nor could they influence national policies. 16 In the post-Mao era, the "totalistic functions performed by the Maoist state" 17 changed such as "playing multiple roles normally left to the private sector in many countries: employer, saver, investor, manager, economic planner, price setter, social provider, and redistributor of social and economic resources" 18 . According to David Shambaugh, "Deng's program changed the very nature of the state from being a proactive agent of social-political change to being a more passive facilitator of economic change and reactive arbiter of social-political tensions". 19 China's political system evolved from an autocratic and highly personalised system under Mao to a more consensus-based, bureaucratic form of authoritarianism based on Leninist party rule. 20 A comparison of the political systems of the German Empire and the PRC reveals both similarities and differences. In terms of similarities leaders such as Bismarck, Mao or Deng perceived themselves as a political avantgarde with the mission to modernise their respective countries. In the case of Imperial Germany political leadership under Bismarck has been described as authoritarian. 21 In China, autocratic rule under Mao turned to a more paternalistic and authoritarian style under Deng. 22 In terms of differences, national policies in the German Empire were debated 16 Ibid., p. 113-128. 17 David Shambaugh (2000) 'The Chinese State in the Post-Mao Era' in David Shambaugh (ed.) The Modern Chinese State (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge), p. 161. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., p. 163. 20 Ibid., p. 172-173. 21  publicly and at times subject to electoral outcomes. In the PRC policies have been largely confined to internal party deliberations and thus can be considered party policies.

State-led industrialisation in Germany
In comparison with its European neighbours Britain and France, Germany's industrial revolution started comparatively late. According to Hans Mottek industrialisation unfolded from 1834 until 1873. The industrial revolution in Germany differed from other European nation-states also in other significant ways. Ralf Dahrendorf identified five phenomena that were characteristic for the special development in Germany. He points to the role of big-sized banks and their support for major companies; state-led top-down industrialisation; state ownership of rails and canals as well as key industries such as mining, iron, electricity, gas, water and transportation; state socialism in the form of the three insurances for health, accident as well as old age and disability; and finally, Dahrendorf identifies a strong emphasis on nationalism as the dominant spirit of the time (Zeitgeist). 23 As a late-comer to industrialisation the German Empire did not have to engage in a bottom-up experimentation and could learn from experiences of neighbouring countries. It did so, however, in a highly selective way. According to Dahrendorf, the German Empire was able to "borrow the achievements of its western neighbours, despite the latter being incompatible with its own social and cultural context. It was able to appropriate the acquired to meet its own ends, to meet the ends of its obsolete institutions." 24 The combination of modern economic forms and an authoritarian political order led to a peculiar form of capitalism in which the state played a dominant role in the 23 Ralf Dahrendorf (1971) Gesellschaft und Demokratie in Deutschland, (Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, München), p. 39-55. 24 Ibid., p. 50. economy. While it enabled the German Empire to industrialise "quickly and thoroughly" 25 , the state-led nature of the process also hampered the growth of small and medium sized companies, prevented the rise of a broad-based and politically conscious bourgeoisie, and undermined the emergence of a citizen society. 26  The comparison of state-led industrialisation in Imperial Germany and the post-Maoist period in the PRC reveals some remarkable similarities. In both cases the political elites could employ the full weight of the state machinery to promote industrialisation from the top down. As late comers, both in Germany and China commercial practices were introduced without adjusting the existing political institutions to the newly adopted models of capitalism. Finally, the strong emphasis on the state as a key developmental actor reduced the space for a more independent private sector and civil society. As the following discussion will show, the late but state-led industrialisation and urbanisation had a profound influence on societal development.

Social responses to state-led modernisation in imperial Germany
Industrialisation and urbanisation in the German Empire led to occupational differentiation. Whereas in 1871 almost half of the German population were employed in agriculture, this percentage dropped to one third at the begin of the first World War. 30 Industrialisation fundamentally altered family structures, in particularly among the working class. Industrial work disciplined the workforce and led to long working hours for men, women and children. When industrial accidents happened, workers were often left without compensation and fell back into poverty. Access to health and education for workers prior to Bismarck's social reforms was limited. 31 Economically successful members of the middle class, on the other hand, such as wealthy industrialists, bankers, and leading administrators integrated themselves into the upper aristocratic class. Dahrendorf argues that the emerging German bourgeoisie was characterised by individuals in competition to one another, unable to instigate a citizen-led revolution and to make demands for a new political class. 32 A born aristocrat himself, Bismarck relied during his liberal era on the parliamentary support of the National Liberal Party (1871-1879), followed by a conservative turn in 1880, when he started working with the conservatives and a reformed and more right-wing National Liberal Party (1880-1890). He was deeply concerned about the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and its ability to garner more and more votes from workers in Reichstag elections. 33 He also perceived the Polish minority in the eastern part of Prussia to be a threat to the unity of the newly unified German Empire.
Bismarck was also suspicious of German Catholics and their loyalty for the Roman church, which he considered a threat to the integrity of the German Empire.
Historians have explained Bismarck's approach towards minorities as one of 'negative integration'. Hans-Ulrich Wehler described it "a manipulative strategy on the part of the Chancellor, designed to safeguard the authoritarian system in an age of rapid social and economic change by focusing the attention of ordinary Germans on a common enemy, large enough to be credible, but not serious enough to threaten the Reich's political survival". 34 Bismarck repeatedly rallied the public against perceived enemies of the empire (Reichsfeinde) to pursue his policy goals.  between the two time periods, it can be argued that societal development in China followed a different path from the German Empire.

Social cellularization in Maoist China
Social stratification in China followed very different trajectories during the Maoist and post-Maoist period. Andrew Nathan has pointed out that Maoism "was highly stratified in several ways: by the class status system, by the system of bureaucratic ranks, and by the social cleavages between rural and urban residents and between state and non-state employees." 39 He maintains that "the system of control mechanisms (units, class labels, political campaigns, the party network) added up to unique achievement in the social technology of control." 40 Chinese farmers were kept in their place and in a significant way tied to the land with the help of the household registration system (hukou zhidu), whereas urban Chinese became dependent on the work unit (danwei) in the allocation of resources. According to Vivienne Shue societal demands had to be channeled through the party-state bureaucracy and "articulated in the categories of the state's own ideology -categories of class struggle and revolutionary purity, anti-imperialism and antirevisionism." 41 Shue maintains that the "party-state relied on its organs of mass mobilization -the peasant associations, labor unions, the women's federation, the youth league, and so on -to press these categories of social analysis and concern into the popular mind." 42 Nathan described the Maoist social structure as one which "forced individuals into dependency on party secretaries in their work units in order to enforce social conformity. 43 " The economic failure of the Great Leap Forward (1958)(1959)(1960)  characterized Chinese social life in the recent past" 48 , it can equally be argued that top-down economic modernisation alone failed to solve persistent social problems such as income inequality, gender inequality, uneven regional development, and mass migration. 49 Chan, Ngok and Phillips have pointed out that "economic benefits have not been equally shared by all citizens, and inequalities have widened between social classes, between rich and poor provinces and between urban and rural areas." 50 Economic modernisation has benefited a relatively small but growing middle class in China, which remains highly dependent on official patronage. According to This can at least partly explain why widening inequalities and societal discontent so far has not posed a direct threat to the continued rule of the CPC. As Saich argues it is "clear that no coherent alternative vision has emerged that would fashion either a civil society or a rapid construction of a democratic political order." 52 At the same time, he points out that "from the party's view, what is lurking in the shadows waiting to pounce on any opening that would allow freedom of expression is revivalism, religion, linguistic division, regional and non-Han ethnic loyalties. 53 " Similar to Bismarck's approach of 'negative integration', the CPC in post-Maoist China has continuously emphasized the dangers of greater pluralism, rather than accepting the latter as a necessary pre-condition for social and political liberalisation. As the German case showed such official intolerance is likely to lead to societal atomisation and fragmentation, thereby undermining bottom-up efforts to strengthen social cohesion through self-organisation and democratic self-government.

Logic and limits of social management in maintaining stability
The discussion so far has compared socio-political developments in the German

Political or social stability?
Despite challenges to its legitimacy, the CPC has been governing China from 1949 until the present day. According to Gunter Schubert it has achieved this feat not only by relying on economic development and nationalism but also by building legitimacy through incremental political reform, more specifically by gradually developing its ideology, adjusting its administrative structures and by enhancing the personal 53 Ibid.. authority of officials. 54 Such 'authoritarian resilience' in the post-Mao period resembles Bismarck's rule in the German Empire, which can be likened to an iron fist in a velvet glove. A key to the understanding why the CPC has been able to hold onto power is the understanding of stability among its political leadership.

Logic and limits of building legitimacy through social policy
Pitman Potter argues that the CPC has also been trying to "build legitimacy through social policy". 64 Reforms became necessary during the transition from the Maoist period, when social welfare was "an integral part of economic policy and planning, rather than a separate residual sector." 65 According to Sarah Cook "a major feature of the system was the division between the 'iron rice bowl' (and arm-chair) security provided to urban state workers (and officials) and much less generous programs of relief and social assistance for the remainder of the population -the minority of urban residents who fell outside the work unit system, and the majority of the rural population." 66 This level of social welfare became unsustainable in the subsequent reform period.
In the post-Maoist period "the government has been transferring back to society and family many welfare functions for which it previously had taken responsibility". 67 Chan, Ngok and Phillips argue that slow economic restructuring and the dismantling of state-owned enterprises (SOE) during the 1990s "almost completely destroyed China's socialist welfare system centred on the welfare activities of communes and state-owned enterprises". 68 Sarah Cook argues that "the government's concern [was] with 'perfecting' the social security system, principally as a means to smooth the reform of the state enterprise sector, maintain social stability, and reduce the costs on the state." 69 Social welfare reforms thus went hand in hand with the introduction of new social policies. The latter were designed to preempt societal challenges to economic policies by co-opting politically significant parts of the Chinese population. Whereas "urban workers received a wide range of social protections including old age insurance, medical insurance and discounts on the sale of public housing" 70 Chan, Ngok and Phillips point out that "poorer families, especially those in rural areas, as well as migrant workers, received inadequate support with public assistance, argued that "concerns ... arise if segments of the population are left behind with insufficient resources to meet basic needs or entitlements". 72 Reviewing the government's efforts in the field of social security, labour, health, education and, housing policies Chan, Ngok and Phillips concluded that "China's welfare reforms focused on the privatisation of public welfare and the localisation of welfare provisions that accelerated social divisions of welfare, threatening the equal value of citizens." 73 They go on to argue that "the development of social policy over the past three decades, revealed from market-oriented welfare provisions, the exclusion of migrant workers from basic needs, and the welfare gap between men and women, shows that China's traditional socialist welfare values centred on equality and human needs have been severely suppressed." 74 The picture that emerges from the discussion of social policies and social services as a key element in China's social management approach both differs and resembles the situation in 19th century Germany. Whereas the challenge for the CPC in post-Maoist China was "to reform and dismantle certain structures, thus reducing entitlements for some, while replacing and extending others" 75 Bismarck's social legislation in 19th century Germany created social safety nets where there had been none before. Bismarck's concern was to reduce the dissatisfaction of the workers by insuring the life risks of sickness, accidents, disability, and old age. 76   In the second part I discussed in more detail the logic and limits of China's social management approach in maintaining stability in the late 20th and early 21st century.
The discussion revealed that leading proponents of the CPC regard the stability of the political system and social stability as two sides of the same coin. Social management has either been understood to signify an opportunity for the inclusion of non-state actors into the development process or as a call to arms for an empowered bureaucracy to actively intervene in societal development. Upon closer inspection it became evident that the CPC's approach to social management combines social policies with increasingly heavy handed policing strategies.
The subsequent discussion centered around the question to which degree the CPC has been able to build legitimacy through social policy. While social policies have so far been successful to co-opt politically significant parts of the Chinese population, the preferential treatment of urban workers over rural Chinese and migrant workers also raise serious questions about social, political and economic justice in China.
According to a study conducted by Göbel and Ong "[social] unrest in China has been increasing at an alarming rate. Few incidents of public demonstrations, disruptive action or riots occured in the 1980s, but 8,700 'mass incidents' were recorded in 1993 alone. By 2005, their number had grown tenfold to 87,000, and estimates for the number of public protests in 2010 range between 180,000 and 230,000." 79 The costs for maintaining social order through domestic policing has also dramatically increased. According to a study conducted by Tsinghua University, the budget for internal security in 2010 surpassed China's spending on national defense. 80 Such developments suggest that the CPC's current social management approach to maintaining stability is not sustainable. One of the historical lessons from Bismarck's approach to social and political stability is that his repression of societal demands was ultimately unsuccessful. So what could be done by the CPC to escape the political predicament of the German Empire, which imploded in 1918?
While none of the Chinese political leaders in the post-Maoist era have attained the historical status of Otto von Bismarck, it can be argued that the CPC as a Leninist party is already playing by his playbook. Preempting societal demands for political reform by establishing a rudimentary form of a Chinese welfare state has helped enhance the party-state's legitimacy. China's current political leaders should however not be too self-congratulatory and simply assume that their social management approach will also work in the future. Bismarck ultimately failed to win over the hearts and minds of German workers. I argued that he failed due to the limited scope and ambition of his social legislation. He also failed to develop the political institutions of the German Empire to meet the needs of a diversifying society.
In conclusion I argue that a deepening of social policies in China would not only contribute to enhanced social safety nets but also help lay the foundation for stateled reconciliation of interests between different parties. The Xi Jinping Administration can also learn another historical lesson from Imperial Germany. It is in its organisational self-interest to gradually open up the political process for non-state actors and to become more inclusive. Such a reform strategy would allow the Xi Administration to continue steering China's transition, albeit with the help of civil society actors and greater public participation.
In 2012 Chinese academic Yu Jianrong put forward a ten-year plan for social and political reforms which provides details how such a political opening could be achieved. In a first reform phase from October 2012 until December 2015 he suggests that China's new political leadership should "(achieve) basic social equality and justice, with the adjustment of public welfare policies as the premise and the the Third Plenum, is to "improve national security strategy and its work mechanism to keep high vigilance against and resolutely forestall activities of separatism, infiltration and subversion carried out by hostile forces to ensure national security." 87 Such continued emphasis on a few social policy carrots and a big political control stick does not bode well for China's future. If the CPC wanted to avoid the predicament of Bismarck's ancien regime and if the new Xi Administration was to adopt Yu Jianrong's ten-year plan for social and political reforms, either wholesale or in part, it may once again prove naysayers wrong and continue to steer China's political future.