ABSTRACT
In the last chapter, I discussed the relationship between the Party and the state. I used the analogy of the relationship between ownership and management to refer to the relationship between the Party and the state. The Party is the creator of the state, and the former owns the latter. The owner, however, does not necessarily manage what it owns, and might delegate managerial authorities and powers to a manager. This is also true in the case of the relationship between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its state. In managing state affairs, the CCP has to delegate its authority and power to the state. In principle, while the state is subordinate to the Party, the Party and its state belong to two different fields. While the CCP has the ultimate political power (political field), the government takes care of the daily social and economic affairs of the country (administrative field). The interest of the Party and that of the government might not be identical. The Party is not necessarily able to exercise effective control over the government, and the government will not necessarily voluntarily take orders from the Party. Therefore, to maintain its domination over the government, the Party has to design various formal and informal institutions and procedures to control the government. In other words, the Party’s domination over the state does not mean that the latter is a completely helpless actor; instead, it has its own unique sources of power and autonomy within the framework of the Party-state.
