The Review Of Overseas Studies On The Governance Capability Of The Communist Party Of China Since Reform And Opening Up

The reform and opening up that began in the late 1970s is a major strategic decision made by the Communist Party of China to explore the path of China’s modernization,which has triggered profound changes in China.Up to now,the Communist Party of China has formed an embedded interactive relationship with the state,the market and the society under the overall leadership of the party.The governance capability of the party is the core supporting force running through it,which has greatly affected the policy quality,implementation efficiency and implementation effect of various reforms in China.In the view of overseas scholars,the introduction of market economy triggered the systematic governance challenges of the Communist Party of China in various fields such as economic development,ideological construction,social governance and political reform.Through theoretical deduction,empirical interpretation and other research methods,overseas scholars have made a variety of predictions about the governance prospect of the Communist Party of China.Since the 21st century,the Communist Party of China has actively explored and practiced feasible solutions to the governance challenges,breaking the "collapse theory" of China at different stages one by one.Therefore,overseas scholars pay more attention to the internal relationship and power process between the governance capability of the Communist Party of China and economic development,ideological construction,social governance and political reform,and try to unlock the successful password of the long-term governance of the Communist Party of China.Therefore,taking the governance prospect of the Communist Party of China under the drastic changes in the external environment of the political system triggered by reform and opening up as the research background,taking the institutional resilience of the communist party-state as the research problem,and taking the theory and practice of the construction of the governance capability of the Communist Party of China as the research object,the overseas studies on the governance capability of the Communist Party of China,which usually focuses on the specific governance adaptive behavior of the Communist Party of China in different fields,has gradually taken shape.The relevant debates have been deepened in the tension between the western modern social science theory led by the"American social science" and the practical development of the governance capability of the Communist Party of China,which not only affects the basic understanding of the Communist Party of China by the international community,but also shapes the self cognition of the behavioral subjects involved in the research object to a certain extent.Since the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee,the CPC has put forward a series of measures to comprehensively deepen reform,which has once again expanded the party’s governance prospect,and the international community’s demand for relevant research has been rising.Therefore,systematically grasping the development of overseas studies on the governance capability of the Communist Party of China since the reform and opening up is of great significance for the construction of the governance capability of the party and the prediction of the trend of the relationship between China and the international community.Based on the above considerations,this paper chooses the issue of the governance capability of the Communist Party of China as the starting point,and adopts the method of combining history with theory to systematically sort out and evaluate the relevant achievements of overseas studies on the governance capability of the Communist Party of China since the reform and opening up.This article is the review of overseas studies.From the definition of basic concepts and related issues,the overseas studies on the governance capability of the Communist Party of China since the reform and opening up refers to the internal understanding and external interpretation of the theory and practice formed by the Communist Party of China around the agenda of "how to strengthen governance capability" by Chinese researchers outside Chinese Mainland,mainly in Europe,America and other English speaking countries and regions.Here,the study will focus on analyzing the basic views and attitudes of overseas scholars about the party’s governance capability that is considered to be more independent,self-sufficient and more actionable in the economic,ideological and cultural,social and political fields,and explore their practical significance for the construction of the governance capability of the Communist Party of China.From the perspective of motivation and evolution,the continuous influence of historical institutional factors is intertwined with emerging social and ideological factors,and is in an open historical process of modernization in a structured form.Therefore,the formation of overseas studies has been affected by political ideasnational form factors,economic order-social structure factors,ideology-ethics and moral factors,showing three progressive research stages,namely,the "research on governance transformation" stage,"research on governance change" stage and"research on governance model" stage.At the stage of "research on governance transformation",overseas scholars generally believed that the governance environment of the Communist Party of China had undergone drastic changes due to the introduction of market economy.They determined that when the economic sub domain gradually withdrew from the scope of political parties,the disintegration process involved the "collapse" of the system.Therefore,overseas scholars believe that the Communist Party of China is facing the pressure of governance transformation-from being a "whole party" to being a "part party".However,after the third wave of democratization and the drastic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe,the third generation of leadership of the Communist Party of China realized a smooth transfer of power,and China’s reform and opening up continued to advance,prompting overseas scholars to pay more attention to the adaptive changes of the governance capability of the Communist Party of China.Therefore,overseas research has entered the stage of "research on governance change".It should be noted that most overseas scholars still regard the communist state as an authoritarian regime fundamentally,and judge that the adaptive changes of the governance capability of the Communist Party of China is essentially a resistance to the western classical democratization road.At the stage of "research on governance mode",some overseas scholars put forward that the effective operation of the governance mode of the Communist Party of China,which contains the connotation of Chinese traditional culture,embedded structured organizational arrangements and institutionalized administrative management system and mechanism,has raised many new problems to the theoretical concepts and evaluation methods of "good governance".From the point of view of arguments and perspectives,a widely accepted judgment of overseas studies is that the supporting base point of the CPC’s governance capability is in the process of contraction since the reform and opening up.However,there are great differences on the scope and extent of its contraction,as well as on how to view the measures taken by the Communist Party of China to deal with these problems and their effects,thus forming three major arguments:the pessimists who focuses on the vulnerability of Leninist political parties,the optimists who focuses on the universality of modern democratization,and the centrists who focuses on the adaptability of the governance capability of the Communist Party of China.The relevant debates are respectively launched from the four relationship categories of the party and the market,the party and ideological culture,the party and society,and the party and the state.The corresponding leading theoretical approaches are neoliberalism theory and neoinstitutional economics theory,political culture theory,civil society theory and corporatism theory,political development theory and policy process theory.From the perspective of the relationship between the party and the market,many overseas scholars insist that the Communist Party of China and its state organizations should not interfere with the operation of the market economy,and its withdrawal from the market is the key to sustainable economic development under the hegemonic discourse woven by neoliberalism and neoinstitutional economics.From the perspective of the relationship between the party and ideological culture,overseas scholars have observed that under the impact of the market economy,the ideology of the Communist Party of China,as a modern expression of Chinese political culture,has the risk of declining cohesion.From the perspective of the relationship between the party and society,the theory of civil society holds that economic modernization promotes the growth of civil society and then forms a restrictive force relative to the governance position of the Communist Party of China.The corporatism theory takes into account the CPC’s absorption of emerging social forces,and determines that the governance status of the CPC will not face the challenge from organized social forces for the time being,but this behavior is not a long-term strategy.In short,in the view of overseas scholars,the relationship between the Communist Party of China in charge of state power and society is in an unstable state.From the perspective of the relationship between the party and the state,overseas scholars generally believe that the above changes caused by economic modernization will eventually be implemented to the issue of political democratization.Therefore,overseas scholars have used the theory of political development and the theory of policy process to explore the relationship between economic modernization and political democratization.From the perspective of topics and characteristics,overseas scholars analyzed the CPC’s capacity to promote economic development,the CPC’s capacity to command ideology,the CPC’s capacity to manage society,and the CPC’s capacity to create systems,and put forward the following questions:how can the party-state regulation be compatible with the market economy,how can the communist ideal be connected with the social reality,how can political stability and social development be isomorphic,and how can party organization consolidation and political reform advance together.From the above research perspectives and research topics,it can be seen that overseas scholars put themselves in the knowledge structure of western modern social sciences and publicized the western mainstream ideology with the dualistic thinking mode,which in fact equated the liberal democratic system with the legitimate order of modern society.When the overseas scholars who take this as the internal norm enter the political,economic,social,ideological and cultural fields of China,they inevitably encounter the test of Chinese social and historical experience and the resistance of national values.In order to better analyze the impact of reform and opening up on the governance capability of the Communist Party of China,overseas research shows a trend that regional study and interdisciplinary study are merged and further integrated into comparative politics and international relations study.Therefore,the overseas research as a whole shows the characteristics of the dominant contradictory thinking mode,the diversity and generalization of the involved fields and the complex interweaving of research methods.Taking a comprehensive view of overseas studies,the references are the multi-domain analysis of the challenges facing the governance capability of the Communist Party of China,the multi-perspective views on the strategies to improve the governance capability of the Communist Party of China,and the global vision of the prediction of the governance prospect of the Communist Party of China.In order to get rid of the "fragmented" and "flat" cognition of most of the existing researches,this paper systematically evaluates and analyzes the defects of the overseas studies on the governance capability of the Chinese Communist Party since the reform and opening up in terms of the nature of the research object,the presupposition of the research problem and the selection of research and demonstration methods,such as the misjudgment of political symbols,the misunderstanding of universal laws and the misreading of theoretical deduction.The ultimate goal of this paper is to solve the following two problems.Firstly,to respond to the question of "regime resilience" put forward by overseas studies,and under the guidance of adhering to the Marxist position,viewpoint and method,this paper interprets the mystery of the CPC’s sustainable governance from three aspects:the party’s theoretical construction capability,the party’s planning coordination capability and the party’s system creation capability.Secondly,in combination with the effective governance experience and ideas brought about by the party’s self reform and innovation,the new topic of "good governance of political parties" is put forward to build an international Communist Party of China research academic space with different aspects on the basis of common concerns.On the one hand,it provides a knowledge source that retains the initiative of the research object for promoting the construction of the social science community and enhancing the general knowledge stock.On the other hand,it lays a narrative foundation for improving the international image of the party and reducing the misunderstanding of China’s development by the international community,so as to enhance China’s international discourse power.