Winning Economic Elites in China: The Role of the United Front Work Department

• In Event: How the State Deals with Opposition

Abstract

In the literature on authoritarian politics, contemporary China is often used as a showcase for repressive and coercive institutional strength. Yet, few studies exist of China’s bureaucratic institutions that engage with the co-optation of non-party elites. In this paper, I show how the Chinese Communist Party relies on one of its key co-optation institutions—the United Front Work Department (UFWD)—to manage the rising economic elites from the private sector. Drawing on rich empirical evidence including in-depth interviews and an original biographical dataset of the top 500 wealthiest people in China, I demonstrate the structure and four major tactics of the UFWD’s embrace of the private sector. Building upon existing literature on China’s economic elites’ participation in political bodies such as the people’s congress, I argue that the purpose of providing seats in the legislature is not only to co-opt the elites but also—following the sequence of the four tactics—to institutionalize and control the rising super-rich in China. My work fills the gap of how co-optation institutions work in communist regimes and what the party-state seeks from the private sector. This paper also enriches a burgeoning literature on the importance of dynamic institutional innovation and adaptation in explaining the resilience of authoritarian regimes.

Author

• Zhu Zhang, Tulane University