The Developmental Consequences of the Communist Revolution in China (1921-2011)

• In Event: Authoritarianism in the Past & Present

Abstract

If revolutionary experience is the root cause of authoritarian endurance, why do some revolutionary regimes succeed in promoting rapid development whereas others fail? Although the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) established one of the most durable revolutionary single-party regimes, it still failed to eliminate territorial disparities in development, even across grassroots locales within the same areas. Exploiting diverse state-building histories during the Communist revolution along with developmental disparities across space allows us to identify the mechanisms of ‘effective’ revolutionary legacies. Drawing upon a nationally representative probability sample of 75 county-level units, we hypothesize that the localities where the CCP experienced a prolonged revolutionary struggle (pre-1949) and exerted more regime-building efforts (in the early years of the PRC) were able to forge more stable, institutionalized, and embedded party organizations than other areas and deliver better developmental outcomes in the long term. Collecting data from recently available historical archives and statistical materials, we construct an original dataset of multiple indicators of developmental outcomes, including population density, mortality, and gender inequality. We link these dependent variables to new indicators of institutional evolution at the county and township levels as well as key markers of CCP activities and leadership turnover, coded since 1921. This study provides novel empirical evidence of the linkage between revolutionary legacies and the nature of local governance in the long run.

Authors

• Zheng ZHANG, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

• Pierre F. Landry, Chinese University of Hong Kong