Revolutionizing Guanxi: Culture as Strategy of Action Revisited

• In Event: 285 - Regular Session. Historical Sociology 2. Changing China: Political Upheaval and Societal Transformations in the 19th and 20th Century

Abstract

How can an organization grow rapidly by absorbing social relations in its organizational environment
yet at same time not lose its coherence? In this paper, I seek to explain why the Chinese Communist Party was able to expand rapidly in the few years from the late 1930s to the early 1940s, an organizational success that paved the way for their eventual takeover of the state power in 1949. Based on hundreds of telegraphs that Mao and his comrades sent to each other about the expansion and crisis of two guerrilla bases as well as other crucial Party documents, I argue that an important factor is the change in the ways the Communists theorized and dealt with external social relationships (guanxi) and contradictions as well as the ways they internally communicated about their social tactics. The elaboration and deployment of a dialectical strategy of achieving unity through opposition pushed Party members to create social opportunities for the Party while at same time preventing them for developing their own interests separate from the Party ("opportunism"). I conclude this paper by revisiting the question of "culture in action" and the role of group strategy in social transformation.

Author

• Xiaohong Xu, National University-Singapore