Papers presented by Zhu Zhang since 2019
2020 Charlotte, North Carolina
"Wealth Without Power: The Rise of Chinese Private Business Elites and Their Relationship to the Communist Party"
Zhu Zhang, Stanford University
Abstract:
My research paper examines a novel puzzle in state-business relations in modern China. Provided that business elites in the post-Soviet states engaged in state capture, how and why has China developed a system of crony communism, in which private business elites aim to neither capture the party-state nor promote democracy? Taking the post-Soviet states as a shadow case, I first compare how Chinese business elites emerged from small cooperatives, whereas Russian oligarchs arose by preying on the key state extractive enterprises. Beyond this historical comparison, using rich archival data of Chinese scholars’ and policymakers’ articles on the Soviet model of economic reform from the Chinese Academy of Social Science, I show how the Party’s leadership took a prudential approach to the process of privatization based on its active learning from the post-Soviet states. Given the Party’s anxiety of its potential rival, I then analyze how the party-state relies on a dual strategy of incorporating business elites (by using the United Front to provide them with seats in the National People's Congress) and confining their political ambitions (by punishing via anti-corruption investigations). This mixed strategy has allowed the Chinese Communist Party to embrace and control the super-rich and prevent state capture. I employ a mixed-method approach, including an original biographical dataset of the top 500 wealthiest persons in China, archives and government reports, and 93 in-depth interviews with business elites and government officials from the United Front Work Department and the Federation of Industry and Commerce across four cities in China. I conclude with a discussion of the undesirable consequences of such tactics and what has changed under President Xi Jinping.