Coalitions of the Weak

An exhaustively researched account of late-Mao power strategy and its consequences on elite dynamics in subsequent decades, including the rise of Xi.

Victor C. Shih (Author)

9781316516959, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 2 June 2022

280 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 2.1 cm, 0.52 kg

… a monumental book for specialists that raises important questions and advances a novel frame for the analysis of Chinese politics.' David M. Lampton, China Quarterly

For the first time since Mao, a Chinese leader may serve a life-time tenure. Xi Jinping may well replicate Mao's successful strategy to maintain power. If so, what are the institutional and policy implications for China? Victor C. Shih investigates how leaders of one-party autocracies seek to dominate the elite and achieve true dictatorship, governing without fear of internal challenge or resistance to major policy changes. Through an in-depth look of late-Mao politics informed by thousands of historical documents and data analysis, Coalitions of the Weak uncovers Mao's strategy of replacing seasoned, densely networked senior officials with either politically tainted or inexperienced officials. The book further documents how a decentralized version of this strategy led to two generations of weak leadership in the Chinese Communist Party, creating the conditions for Xi's rapid consolidation of power after 2012.

1. Introduction
2. Coalition of the Strong: Mao's Predicament After the Great Leap Forward
3. 'Counterrevolutionary Splittists' in Mao's Ruling Coalition
4. The Scribblers Mafia: Radical Ideologues in Mao's Coalition
5. Realizing the Coalition of the Weak: Politics in the Late Mao Period
6. The Collapse of the Coalition of the Weak and Power Sharing in the 1980s
7. Weak Successors: the Final Calculus of the Founding Generation and the Rise of Xi Jinping
8. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Political structures: totalitarianism & dictatorship [JPHX], Marxism & Communism [JPFC], Comparative politics [JPB], Asian history [HBJF]