Chinese Politics Mini-Conference: Consolidating State Power

Session Submission Type: Created Panel

Part of Mini-Conference

• Chinese Politics Mini-Conference

Session Description

This panel, centered on the theme of “Consolidating State Power,” brings together five pioneering studies that provide critical insights into the mechanisms and challenges of state formation and power consolidation in both imperial and contemporary China. Clair Yang and Yasheng Huang’s work sheds light on pivotal moments in the consolidation of political power during the Middle Ages, highlighting Europe’s shift towards polycentrism and China’s move towards bureaucratic centralization, which set distinct developmental trajectories for each region. Erik Wang and Joy Chen, focusing on the role of the military in state-building, examines the paradoxical effects of military reforms during the Tang Dynasty, revealing the complexities in balancing centralized military control with maintaining state coercive capacity. Peng Peng and Haohan Chen underscores the significant role of political elites in China’s transition from empire to nation-state, demonstrating how ideational change was essential in consolidating national sovereignty. Moving to contemporary China, the state employs various methods to strengthen societal control and consolidate power. Two papers in this panel explore the art of state control from different perspectives. Jieun Kim investigates the impact of national language (Putonghua) promotion on increasing regime support, utilizing a major language reform as an identification strategy. Chao-Yo Cheng and coauthors, through an analysis of over 130 thousand original court records, assess the effects of elevated trials in administrative litigation reform on citizens’ chances of winning cases against the government. Both reforms are shown to strengthen the state’s power, with Kim finding that Putonghua promotion enhances regime support, while Cheng et al. argue that the legal reform decreases the likelihood of citizens winning cases against county governments.

Sub Unit

• Division 13: Politics of Communist and Former Communist Countries

Individual Presentations

• National Language Promotion under Authoritarianism - Jieun Kim, NYU Shanghai

• War, Political Entrepreneurs, and National Sovereignty in China - Peng Peng, Washington University in St Louis; Haohan Chen, The University of Hong Kong; Yingtian He, Tsinghua University

• The Consequences of Military Control in Medieval China - Erik H Wang, New York University; Joy Chen, Renmin University of China

• New Crops and Old States - State Building in Historical China - Yasheng Huang, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Clair Yang, University of Washington

• Justice from Above? Elevated Trials and Intergovernmental Delegation in China - Chao-yo Cheng, Birkbeck, University of London; Haibo He, Tsinghua University; Chao Ma, University of International Business and Economics

Chair

• Li Shao Zhejiang University

Discussants

• Yuhua Wang Harvard University

• Denise van der Kamp Oxford University