Yuen Yuen Ang on Xi Jinping, the Party bureaucracy, and authoritarian resilience
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This week on Sinica, Kaiser welcomes back University of Michigan political scientist Yuen Yuen Ang, who discusses a recent piece in the *Journal of Democracy *titled "How Resilient is the CCP?)" The essay examines how China's bureaucracy remains surprisingly competent and even relatively autonomous despite Xi Jinping's highly personalistic style of rule.

3:51 – Summarizing debates on Chinese governance in the current China watcher field 

8:43 – Defining the concept of institutionalization and contextualizing it to China

13:39 – Explaining Xi’s bureaucratic objectives: maintaining competence but limiting autonomy

18:57 – Remaining areas of autonomy for China’s state bureaucracy

22:11 – Key areas where Xi weakened bureaucracy

26:08 – Institutionalization prior to the Xi era 

29:00 – Main sources of resilience and threat under Xi’s new model for authoritarianism 

31:45 – Fundamental difference between Mao and Xi

34:52 – The revival of state bureaucracy and technocrats after Mao’s death

40:13 – How do we understand the tension between expertise and ideology in Xi’s governance agenda?  

46:15 – Historical roots of technocracy in the Chinese government

49:09 – The CCP’s technocratic bureaucracy as an integral source of resilience

A complete transcript of this podcast is available on TheChinaProject.com).

Recommendations: 

**Yuen Yuen: **Chinese drama series Zǒuxiàng gònghé) 走向共和 (Towards the Republic); and *Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire *)by David Remnick

Kaiser:* Children of Earth and Sky*),* A Brightness Long Ago*), and All the Seas of the World) — a historical fantasy novel trilogy by Guy Gavriel Kay 

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