Autocratic tradition and Chinese politics / Zhengyuan Fu.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [369]-390) and index.

1. Introduction. Some theoretical considerations. The organization of this book -- 2.The rise of the Chinese beaureaucratic empire. State building during the Eastern Zhou period. The rise of the Qin empire. Comparison with Western experience. Significance of the bureaucratic empire -- 3. Pre-Qin political philosophy. Confucius and the Confucians. Lao Zi and Daoism. Mo Di. The Legalists: the totalitarians -- 4. Imperial ideology and authority. Institutionalization of imperial official orthodoxy. The emperor cult. Bases of authority and pattern of dynastic change -- 5. Traditional Chinese political institutions. The formal structure of the imperial state. The emperor's domination over the beaureaucracy -- 6. Domination of the imperial state over society. Control over the local community. Control over the economy and state monopoly. Control over ideology. The statist orientation of trditional political culture.

7. The imperial legal order. Origins of Chinese imperial law. Law as punishment. Law as a tool of the ruler's. Confucianization of law -- 8. The centrality of the emperor and imperial political practices. Regional forces, imperial household and clansmen, and palace eunuchs. Coercive aspects of imperial domination -- 9. The fall of the empire and the rise of the PRC. The decline and fall of the Qing dynasty. Failure of the first Chinese Republic and rise of the PRC. The emergence of modern Chinese civil society -- 10. Ideology and authority under the CCP. Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought as official orthodoxy. Impact of the hegemony of Marxism-Leninism on intellectual activity. The cult of Mao. The basis of authority and power -- 11. The structure and process of the PRC political system. The formal structure of the party-state. Distinctive characteristics of the political process.

12. The capabilities of the party-state. The party-state's regulative capability. The party-state's symbolic capability. The party-state's extractive and allocative capability. Some relevant derivative features of the PRC political system -- 13. The new legal order. Development of the PRC legal system. The formal structure of the PRC legal system. The party's mandate over law. Deinstitutionalization of the PRC political-legal order. Conclusion -- 14. Political movements: I. Early CCP intraparty struggles. The Yanan Rectification Movement, 1942-1944. Suppress Counterrevolutionaries, Land Reform, and Oppose America Aid Korea movements, 1950-1953. The Thought Reform Movement, 1951. Three-Anti and Five-Anti movements, 1952. The Purge Counterrevolutionaries Movement, 1955-1957. The Socialist Transformation, 1953-1956.

15. Political movements: II. The Hundred Flowers and Anti-Rightist movements, 1957. The Great Leap Forward, 1958-1961. The Anti-Right Deviation Movement, 1959-1961. The great famine, 1959-1961. The Socialist Education Movement and the Four Clean Movement, 1962-1965 -- 16. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, 1966-1976. Prelude to the Cultural Revolution. The rise and fall of the Red Guards. New alignment and conflict. The April 5 Tiananmen Square incident. Some thoughts on the Cultural Revolution -- 17. Post-Mao politics. The Beijing Spring. Factional differences within the political leadership. Literary dissent and the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Movement. Anti-Bourgeois Liberalization. The June 4 Massacre. The aftermath of the June 4 Massacre -- 18. Conclusion.

This book examines the Chinese political tradition over the past two thousand years and argues that the enduring and most important feature of this tradition is autocracy. The author interprets the Communist takeover of 1949 not as a revolution but as a continuation of the imperial autocratic tradition.

The book shows how Mao Zedong revitalized this tradition along five lines: the use of ideology for political control; concentration of power in the hands of a few; state power over all aspects of life; law as a tool wielded by the ruler, who is himself above the law; and the subjection of the individual to the state. Using a statist approach, the book argues that in China political action of the state has been the single most important factor in determining socio-economic change.