Overview

While the years between 1927 and 1953 in China were a time of war, revolution, and social disintegration, they were also a time for building political legitimacy. In this ground-breaking work, Ray Hartman painstakingly details how Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders perceived political legitimacy during the party’s formative years. He argues that Chinese Communist leaders’ conception of legitimacy was the main force driving the party’s policies and military strategy during this time. Although “legitimacy” often comes up in discussions pertaining to the CCP's performance regarding the party's policies -- whether they be social, economic, or military -- this work is the first to demonstrate how top CCP leaders, themselves, understood the concept. Providing extensive documentation from party directives and speeches (including recently available sources) as well as memoirs written by party members and military leaders, the author reveals a CCP consumed with the notion of its own legitimacy in hopes of not only attaining power but saving the Chinese state from destructive internal and external forces.

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9781666916843

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This book offers extensive empirical evidence on how the CCP developed its political support and military tactics during its formative years and the Korean War based on a tripartite framework of Chinese political legitimacy. It makes a significant contribution to our comprehension of the biggest political party in the world and its arduous battle to wrest control of political power and preserve its broad base of popular support. This study of the Chinese idea of legitimacy and how the CCP has adapted to it filled an important gap in the study of Chinese political development. -- Baogang Guo, Dalton State College

Author Information

Ray Hartman is assistant professor at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul.

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