"Chinese Party Publicity Inc." conglomerated: the case of the Shenzhen Press Group

In contrast to the pathways of post-Communist transformation in Central and Eastern Europe as well as in the former Soviet Union (Sparks 1997; Downing 1996; Splichal 1994), China seems to be turning itself into something akin to what O’Donnell (1978) described as a bureaucratic-author-itarian regime. O’Donnell was referring to right-wing capitalist dictatorships in Latin America that were intent on using economic development to quell political participation and to make up for the lack of a mandate. Authoritarian Asian regimes of South Korea (Park et al. 2000), Taiwan (Lee 2000) and Singapore (Sim 2001) were noted for justifying their suppression of press freedom and civil liberties on the ground that economic growth is predicated on social stability. We maintain that bureau-cratic-authoritarian regime is becoming a useful concept to understand China in its contested and not always linear transition from a left-wing to a quasi-right-wing dictatorship. China’s officialdom has attached highly negative connotations of chaos and failure to the Soviet political reform, claiming that its own reform policies have brought about enormous benefits to people and are once again making the Chinese nation mightily proud in the world arena. Yet China’s impressive record of economic growth is achieved at the expense of social justice: peasants and unemployed urban workers have been gravely deprived of a socialist ‘‘safety net’’ in terms of jobs, housing, education, medical care and a decent income. Coterminous with China’s embrace of the global capitalist structure and the rise of nationalistic sentiment, more and more domestic capitalists have been ordained as new Communist Party members. Preservation of power has become the very end of the Communist Party rather than a means to achieving Communism.