Chains of Command: Chinese Power Structures Beyond the Communist Party
12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
November 2, 2022
Contact Info:
klvb001@bucknell.edu
Bertrand Library, 213 - Traditional Reading Room
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Professor Henrike Rudolph, “Chains of Command: Chinese Power Structures Beyond the Communist Party”
November 2nd, noon – 1:00 p.m. (US time), Traditional Reading Room 213
Zoom link: https://bucknell.zoom.us/j/96713317486 (password: 1102111)
Abstract:
To Western observers, the Chinese party-state might appear to be a monolith, an unchanging giant bureaucratic apparatus set on a Socialist course since 1949. At closer inspection, however, China’s political system is a system in flux. The absence of a constitution that effectively limits state interventions or a clear separation of powers necessitates a continuous process of negotiations and co-optations between the party and state institutions, government bodies, and central and local levels. In the People’s Republic of China, effective governance rests largely on networks of strategic cooperation and mutual dependency. While political research on the People’s Republic of China often highlights the relationships among leading CCP cadres, networks that extend beyond the core power nexus and include non-CCP elites are often overlooked.
This talk outlines the structures that bind China’s intellectual elites to the Communist party and explores their historical legacy. Using the example of the Jiusan Study Society, one of the so-called “democratic parties and groups,” it discusses the potential of using the theories and methods of historical network analysis to uncover how such parties establish chains of command and communication between the CCP and China’s educated elites.
Short Bio:
Henrike Rudolph is an assistant professor at the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Göttingen. Trained in Sinology and Political Science, she completed her Ph.D. at Hamburg University and Fudan University, Shanghai, in 2017. Rudolph worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Chair of Contemporary Chinese Studies at Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen-Nuremberg. Before coming to Göttingen, she held an interim professorship at the University of Heidelberg. Her research interests lie in the transcultural exchange of knowledge and skills, education thought, and network approaches to social and political history, focusing on twentieth-century China.
All are Welcome.
Lunch will be provided!
Original source can be found here.
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