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When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) decided to open up the country to the rest of the world and reform its socialist economic system in December 1978, few could have imagined how many economic, social and political changes would take place in the next 40 years. With an average annual growth rate of over 9%, China has become the world’s second-largest economy and its share in the global economy has increased from 2.7% to 16%.

Since Xi Jinping’s leadership came into power, the reform and opening up have entered into a more sensitive stage. The high-speed growth was replaced by a moderate rate of 7% or so. Further, economic growth requires reform of the state-business relations or even the political system per se. Such reform, according to many observers, has been slowed down in the recent decade or stopped by so-called “vested interests” — those who gain from the existing system and are reluctant to make further reforms. In the meantime, the Internet, big data and artificial intelligence have increasingly become a major engine for economic growth and reshaped various sectors of industries. How to use these vibrant technological progresses to boost economic development but not allowing the flow of information to threaten the existing regime remains a challenge for the Chinese leadership. A series of changes in the political sphere, such as Xi’s consolidation of power and removal of term limits of state president, have brought about confusion among China observers regarding the future direction of the country.

In 2017, the 19th Party Congress announced an ambitious development plan to continue the country’s economic miracle. By 2020, China will turn itself into “a moderately prosperous society in all respects”; by 2035, China will realize “socialist modernization” and by the middle of this century, China will become “a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful.” When the country is steered on the way to those grand goals, what kind of social and political changes will ensue?

It is risky for academic researchers to predict the future. Fortunately, we can learn from history. Francis Bacon said “Histories make men wise.” In the Chinese tradition, history has always been a source of wisdom and strength. To review the experience of reform, the opening up in the past decades will help us develop a clearer view of the future.

When we look retrospectively after four decades, it is evident that the dramatically changed economic landscape is both the result and the driving force of institutional reform and innovation. The question is how far the reform and innovation will go. Academic scholars have long debated on the degree to which China has departed from the Leninist system, and the degree to which alternative rules and procedures have been institutionalized. Economically, scholars discuss whether the country’s market transition has generated institutions that could reduce the cost of technological innovation and advance, which can sustain the rapid growth. In the social sphere, researchers observe how the authoritarian state interacts with changing social values and demands, and how the expanding welfare regime complicates with the market transition process.

Writers of Chinese politics discuss whether China’s political process has become institutionalized since the regime has been apparently moving away from the Maoist era. Some believe the reform and opening up has made formal procedural rules more vital in decision making and implementation process, thereby facilitating the institutionalization of elite selection, elite management and elite succession, which constitute important sources of authoritarian resilience. Others contend that the institutionalization thesis is misleading. The Chinese political system has moved from political tumult to relative peace; but nothing more than that. Personal loyalty and clientelism still prevail within the system. The general rules are still Leninist in essence.

This volume we edited reflects our latest efforts in understanding changing political, social and economic landscapes during the reform era. The Institute of Public Policy (IPP) at the South China University of Technology has a long tradition of studying political, economic and social development of contemporary China. Cooperating with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, IPP has hosted a series of international conferences to discuss the major challenges to China and the world since 2013. The chapters in this volume are selected from papers presented at the conferences held in 2014, 2015 and 2016.

The chapters consist of three thematic clusters. The first cluster discusses reform within the party-state. Our authors review changes in the party, the bureaucracy, the state companies, as well as conceptually examine the idea of meritocracy. The second cluster surveys the social sphere. Emphases are given to how public opinion and mass political behavior intertwine with state policy, and how the state enforces its social policy in welfare and poverty reduction. The final cluster focuses on economy and technology, discussing China’s endeavor in promoting innovation-driven development and new green industries.

The first thematic cluster begins with a chapter on reforms within the political system. “Is China’s political system innovative?” this is a question Yongnian Zheng attempts to answer in his chapter. In the past three decades, the Chinese political system has established an “internal pluralism” — the ruling party opens itself to emerging social interests and absorbs them into the regime. This political openness has facilitated the rapid alternation of political elite in an institutionalized manner. Deng successfully established a number of important institutions, including term limits, age limits and collective leadership. But Xi has made vital changes. With a number of central leading groups, Xi has strengthened his control over economy, security, propaganda and foreign policy. Xi now enjoys unparalleled power and the collective leadership is undermined. Chinese political system tends to make policy changes rather than other systems as there are no opposition parties. China has been regarded as a “learning state”. Learning from other country’s success or failure has been one of the major sources for China’s progress. As a learning state, the regime is quite innovative in reforming its political institutions.

If according to Zheng there is a certain level of institutionalization going on, Joseph Fewsmith somehow disagrees on this point. In Chapter 2, he examines the reform of the cadre system. After the Cultural Revolution, Beijing has attempted to reestablish and modernize the cadre system. Many younger and better-educated cadres were promoted. While many scholars view this reform as “regularization” or “institutionalization” of elite management, Fewsmith argues that there are a series of tensions that make the system behave in an irrational fashion in Weberian sense. The first tension results from a vertical control system and a horizontal coordination system. The rather unconstrained power of local party heads induces personalism in the system, encouraging cadres to be “hyper-responsive to their immediate supervisors at the expense of other interests.” Another tension falls between upper-level assignments and local expectations. The third problem of the cadre system is multiple policy goals from higher-ups which local cadres find difficult to align with, leading to selective policy implementation, thus frustrating a number of reform initiatives. In conclusion, the author believes that “cadres” are not Weberian “administrators”. The efforts to professionalize the bureau-cracy are subversive of party control.

Another important aspect of the Chinese system is the state-business relationship. Kjeld Erik Brodsgaard deals with this aspect in Chapter 3 by exploring the reform of one important group of Chinese political elite — the supermanagers in the state-owned companies. Those companies are huge in regard to manpower, assets, and annual turnover. The managers of those companies have gained autonomy in business operations and become powerful enough to generate capital. The CEOs are part of a new corporate elite who enjoy high salaries and fringe benefits. They are so powerful that they could be able to block state initiatives. They are part of the party-state cadre system, ranking at vice-ministerial or even full ministerial level. The Party’s central organization department is in charge of their appointment, promotion, or dismissal. One way to control the supermanagers is rotation, transferring them from one leadership position to another, which integrates them into the power system and gives them work experiences across various sectors, and most importantly, form an iron triangle of party, state, and business. The supermanager group thus constitutes a powerful interest group in the political system. A number of reforms have been introduced to constrain the social impact of the rising class of supermanagers. The long-term effects of such reforms remain to be seen.

China’s somewhat unique way of political economic change has not only inspired a great amount of empirical studies, but also attracted interests from political theorists who attempt to make sense of the normative meaning of China’s non-democratic development. Based on a critical review of Danial Bell’s book on China model, Baogang He takes efforts to reconcile political meritocracy and democracy. Empirically, the chapter presents several cases of political experiments, in which local officials tried to integrate meritocratic procedures with electoral competitions in local elite recruitments or promotions. Conceptually, the author believes China’s experiments can be viewed as authoritarian meritocracy with some democratic characteristics. Differing from a democratic perspective of legitimacy which requires popular sovereignty, He finds that the Chinese system has a tradition to seek mixed sources of legitimacy. The rulers’ right to govern is not only based on the mandate of heaven, but also on their performance and virtue, and they must be subject to people’s approval, or at least meet people’s demands.

If there is still debate on how much the Chinese political system has been changed, few would disagree that there have been fundamental changes in the Chinese society during the reform era. Our second cluster deals with public attitudes and state responses. Public evaluation of public policies is related to regime legitimacy. A high satisfaction of policies contributes to social and political stability, and therefore reinforces legitimacy. In Chapter 5, Wenfang Tang and Dong Yu attempt to explore public satisfaction of governmental policies among Chinese urban residents. Their analyses are based on multi-rounds of telephone survey in ten Chinese cities. They find issues closely related to people’s everyday life, such as food safety, price, housing, etc., usually have a lower level of public satisfaction. In contrast, the most satisfied policies are those relatively far away from daily life, like ethnic harmony, national security and foreign policy. The chapter goes further to trace historical trend of satisfaction levels with data covering the period from May 1987 to October 2013. After a dramatic decline in May 1989, satisfaction levels of all policy issues rebounded. Except clean governance, all other issues have been on the ascending curve in recent years, showing Chinese government has won popularity among citizens. Based on regression analyses, the authors argue that the sources of policy satisfaction include regional variance, media access, and socioeconomic status. Furthermore, policy satisfaction affects people’s modes of political action. The dissatisfied tend to either take radical actions or do nothing.

China has carried out elections in villages and urban residential communities for about 30 years. Wei Shan and Wenfang Tang trace changes in socio-demographic factors and political attitudes of voters in community elections in Chapter 6. They attempt to answer three questions: Who vote? Why vote? What are the consequences of voting? Using multiple national random surveys conducted from 1993 to 2013, they find those elections had provided a meaningful and important channel for Chinese people to participate in politics until recent years. Educated and politically confident people were more likely to vote or participate in electoral campaigns. Voters are not motivated to participate by democratic values, but by practical reasons, for instance, punishing corrupt officials. Voting or involvement in campaign activities increases satisfaction with the local government and with one’s own life. Those who stay away from elections show more inclination to express their views by protesting activities than those who take part in voting and campaigns. After around 2008, all these patterns have disappeared due to stronger state intervention and therefore a decline in competitiveness. Political contestation in villages and residential communities has produced very little dynamics for political reform of the entire system.

Developmentalism is the major model of economic and social development in Japan and the East Asian “Little Tigers.” Apparently, China has been following other East Asian societies in terms of social policy. Litao Zhao finds in Chapter 7, however, China’s shift to the welfare deepening trajectory has been complicated by the country’s other dimension of transition: from a central-planned economy to a market-oriented one. The author conceptualizes China’s approach as “fragmented developmentalism,” which can be seen as a variant of developmentalism. Four features of the Chinese system, fragmented bureaucracy, decentralization, market transition, and the household registration system, combinedly make the model of fragmented developmentalism. This fragmented system has brought about income inequality, environmental pollution, unequal pension and healthcare, as well as declining social trust and morality. The author suggests that Chinese government should adopt a more integrated approach to reform the welfare regime, establishing nation-level redistribution mechanisms to make the system more equal.

In Chapter 8, Jiwei Qian reviews the development programs for poverty reduction in rural China. Forty years of efforts have made substantial achievements. The number of poor in the country has been cut by over half even when the poverty line has been rising up. According to the author, the development programs have experienced several phases, and in different phases, the programs were aimed to address different reasons for poverty. Later development programs also dealt with problems produced in earlier programs. However, the effects of those programs vary in different regions and contexts. In some areas, residents with more market access or rich residents were found to receive more benefits from poverty reduction projects. Some rural poor who had been lifted out of poverty have returned poor. Qian also examines the case of Chongqing, where the government has attempted to address the poverty issue by promoting rural-urban integration. The dual structure of economy between urban and rural areas is one of the major constraints in poor regions. The Chongqing experience provides a different approach from traditional development programs. For future programs, the author believes industry-based or society-based poverty reduction should be the direction, bringing in enterprises in various industries such as agriculture, water conservancy, education, health, as well as social organizations for the same cause.

Four decades of rapid economic development have reached the point of searching for new modes of growth. The third thematic cluster in this book discusses China’s pursuit of environment-friendly and technological-driven development. From technological, financial, and governance perspectives, John A. Mathews in Chapter 9 believes China’s search for a new model of green-energy-based industrial development is not because of concerns about climate change, but because of necessities to handle environmental pollution and geopolitical tensions related to fuel energy. Politically, this alternative can provide energy security since energy can be derived from domestic resources such as solar, wind, and water. China’s adopting eco-modernizing strategy has spillover effects, encouraging firms in other parts of the world to pursue similar strategies, and therefore reinforcing the global ecomodernizing tendencies already under way. The author argues that a fundamental process is going on. Through the process, diminishing returns are replaced by increasing returns, and material processing is replaced by artificial product manufacturing. These are fundamental to eco-modernization, allowing for green growth in China.

China has parted from its decades of hyper-economic growth. Since the major factors driving the past growth have become exhausted, the country’s future growth hinges on its capability of making technological progress and innovation. Ding Lu reviews the evolution of China’s national planning and policy for science and technology in Chapter 10, finding the results are mixed. On the one hand, China’s R&D strategies have escalated the country’s domestic industries on the global value chains and innovation ladders. On the other hand, the innovation has yet to be translated into a major driver of China’s economy. In recent few years, the Chinese government has promoted market-based innovation and encouraged the general public with entrepreneurship to involve innovation. A number of local governments were selected for institutional reforms to improve market competition, intellectual property rights, technological transformation, financial innovation, personnel training, and science and technology managerial system. Lu believes those initiatives may be in the right direction and if successfully implemented, they will facilitate China’s transition to innovation-driven development.

Trying to summarize the 40-year experience of China’s reform and opening up in one volume is too ambitious for us. Yet with this book, we do hope to make a preliminary contribution to our understanding of certain aspects in this time period. The intellectual journey calls for unremitting involvement of the entire China study community and of the broader scholarship from different disciplines. We thank the IPP for organizing these conferences and the speakers who contributed to this book. Special thanks to the World Scientific for its effort in publishing the book, especially to Ms. Lixi Dong and Mr. Anthony Alexander who were actively involved in its publication. Our colleagues in IPP, particularly Ms. Ying Zhou, Ms. Zeng Hui and former colleague Mr. Wei Luo, were also involved the publishing process.