The Economist: The brains of the party

FEW people have heard of the journal Internal Reference of Ideology and Theory. It is published in such secrecy by the Central Party School in Beijing that only several dozen people read it. They just happen to be the most powerful people in China. Nicknamed the “express train”, it is one of a few vehicles trusted to carry ideas directly to the desks of President Xi Jinping and his colleagues on the Politburo.

As the task of governing China has become more complex, so too has the question of how ideas percolate and filter to the top. Long gone are the days of Mao, when one man disastrously set policy with utter disregard (and sometimes deadly scorn) for the input of his advisors or the welfare of the public. Mr Xi (pictured, in foreground at right) has called for the party to expand its brain capacity to handle such issues, urging the development of “think-tanks with Chinese characteristics”. In recent years hundreds of new institutes and research centres have been established, most of them government-affiliated in some way. Scholars and writers participate in a more open, though not totally free, public marketplace of ideas. Public opinion has more influence than ever on the shaping of policies on such social flash-points as high housing prices, wealth inequality and pollution.

But the decisive competition for ideas and policy at the centre of power is a more secretive one, fought through private channels. The Western notion of think-tanks as a government’s “external brains” has not taken root in China. On purely practical terms, more independent organisations have great difficulty fitting into the schema of Chinese policymaking. They have less access to information than their counterparts in less secretive systems, meaning their recommendations often lack “operationability”, as one party insider put it. They also may lack reliable channels to the top.

But most of all, truly independent think-tanks are not something the Communist Party really wants—they are a feature of civil society as liberal democracies define it, not as the party defines it. The party wants its brains to be internal organs. Those “think-tanks” with the most influence in China do not write for the public but for a much smaller audience. The most powerful research institutions show up on public lists of China’s most influential “think-tanks”, but they do not engage much with the public or with each other, and none are independent. They are trusted instruments of the Communist Party and the state. This makes it inherently difficult for heterodox ideas to waft upwards to the top.

The obscurity of Internal Reference of Ideology and Theory reflects the leadership’s closely held approach to consultation. Launched in the 1990’s, the journal was believed to have been a favourite of China's then-President, Jiang Zemin. The distribution list includes the 25 members of the Politburo and a handful of others. The titles, but not the content, of some older articles can be found online, including articles on the “urgent need” to resolve the skewed sex ratio of Chinese births, the social risks posed by the demands of survivors of the Sichuan earthquake in 2008, and how China should handle a North Korean nuclear test in 2006. Another article argued for softening China’s grain self-sufficiency policy—a longstanding pillar of party rule—under the logic that importing more of certain grains would relieve stress on China’s land and water resources.

In Beijing bracing advice on such sensitive subjects can come only privately from a loyal institution like the Central Party School, the party’s elite training and research academy for officials. “They see you as one of their own. You can say anything to your own people,” says Deng Yuwen, former deputy editor of another Central Party School publication, Study Times. 

Other influential “think-tanks” are also wholly inside the system. The State Council’s Development Research Centre (DRC) can influence policy by delivering blistering reports (that carefully avoid blaming top leaders), as it did in pushing an overhaul of public health care almost a decade ago. But it mostly prepares reports and policy recommendations at the behest of top leaders (government-funded “assigned research” is the bread and butter of many Chinese think-tanks). The China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations produces analyses of foreign policy for top leaders, including a daily briefing as well as advance packets for leaders’ overseas trips. It also operates under the Ministry of State Security, and interacts with foreigners at least in part to collect intelligence. 

Because most such institutions offer their guidance privately and not publicly—and use classified channels to do so—there is also very little interplay between advisors and their ideas. David Shambaugh of George Washington University says that “stovepiping” of ideas to the top by a few insular institutions is a dominant feature of this system. Crucially there is no reliable mechanism to share the most important ideas and proposals publicly—generally classified as secret, internal reports are not even entrusted to the post for delivery. It is not an open marketplace of ideas because it is designed specifically not to be.

Some institutions that do engage more with the public are viewed to have less influence internally. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a massive government research centre with thousands of employees, produces hundreds of reports annually on everything from the economy to social policy to foreign affairs. It also regularly engages the Chinese press, and some of its scholars are among the best-known in China; but they are believed to hold less sway in Zhongnanhai, the central leadership compound in Beijing, than quieter competitors.

Mr Deng, formerly of Study Times, was reminded last year of how far China is from an open debate on public policy. In February 2013 he published an op-ed in the Financial Times titled, “China should abandon North Korea”, in which he criticised China’s longstanding alliance with North Korea and said China should instead push for reunification of the Korean peninsula. Mr Deng was dismissed from his job and is now a visiting scholar at the University of Nottingham. He says that when he tried to publish the article in China’s state media he could not find any takers, but was surprised by the severity of his punishment for publishing in the Financial Times.

Until scholars feel they can speak with complete freedom, Mr Deng says, they will always be trying to guess what the leaders want to hear. They will also be more inclined to deliver their advice privately to leaders, through “internal reference” channels, personal connections to leaders’ secretaries and other means. “Even some of those scholars viewed by the public as the ‘opposition’ are in fact also sending reports to the leaders,” Mr Deng says. “It has something to do with a defect of Chinese intellectuals—they all want to be the emperor’s mentor.”

The biggest danger of this emperor-advisor relationship is that it rewards advisors who tell the emperor what they already think, and punishes (or at least fails to reward) radical thinking. Less official institutions may grow to become influential think-tanks in the next decade, but probably not as bastions of independence. The Boyuan Foundation, set up by a wealthy banker in 2007, is closely connected to the families of some top leaders and to elite players in the financial system. China Centre for International Economic Exchanges has strong support from the party, and boasts a roster of retired high-level officials serving on its board. The closer it is perceived to be to government, the better its prospects. The conundrum is that the more independent a think-tank appears to be, the more in danger it is of becoming irrelevant. What they can do to a limited extent is educate the public and spur discussion online, though the more successful they are at this, the more official scrutiny they invite (one longstanding independent think-tank, the Unirule Institute of Economics, has struggled in recent years). In this respect they still suffer somewhat from the legacy of student protests in 1989 and the ensuing crackdown, which snuffed out an era of daring independent advocacy from liberal scholars.

It may not always be thus. More wealthy Chinese entrepreneurs are beginning to put their own money into institutes, which will reduce reliance on government largesse for scholarly research, and perhaps open up more space for independent public policy advice. “That’s pretty nascent now but the writing’s on the wall,” says Kenneth Lieberthal of the Brookings Institution. “Unless the party decides this is a threat.”