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Speaker: Dr Jérôme Doyon
This talk is based on a book project which explores how the Chinese Party-State renewed its leadership starting from the early 1980s by developing a political mobility system in which the Party’s youth organizations play a key role. In contrast to the strategy adopted by Khrushchev in the post-Stalin era, which emphasized the co-optation of technically trained professionals, the Chinese Party-State has selected and cultivated recruits starting from the first year of college, and progressively incorporated them into its elite. Throughout this process the recruits are transformed by the organization, which eventually reinforces their political commitment. They develop a specific social role as future officials and transform their social circles. This commitment cultivation process is particularly important as ideology does not structure the political system anymore.
By focusing on the beginning of the political career, we can analyze the cadres’ professionalization process as well as the development of both personal and organizational loyalties. Based on this approach, this research challenges the common narratives on both the meritocratic and factional features of the Chinese Party-State. The research is mixed methods, including the statistical analysis of career data and the qualitative study of young officials’ trajectories and their commitment formation.
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Jérôme Doyon is a Departmental Lecturer at the School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford. His research focuses on Chinese domestic politics, in particular the Party-State apparatus, elite politics, political youth organizations, and the management of ethno-religious minorities. He is the author of Négocier la place de l’islam chinois : Les associations islamiques à Nankin sous l’ère des réformes [Arranging a space for Chinese Islam : Islamic associations inNanjing during the reform era], (L’Harmattan : Paris, 2014).