Neibu Cankao (NC) is widely recognized as one of China’s classified internal bulletins, yet little is known about its functions and how it shaped the central-local relations in the country. NC began its publication by the Xinhua News Agency in 1949 as a daily bulletin, documenting sensitive domestic topics which were not suitable for public release, such as riots, cases of corruption, accidents, and outbreaks of infectious disease. Its circulation was limited, with only senior cadres of the CCP being granted access. Despite its similarity with the Soviet bulletin system, NC was a product of the CCP’s own attempt at solving the information dilemma of its dictatorship, and thus served as an important tool for gathering information. It also played a crucial role in the supervision of lower cadres, while at the same time providing the central committee of the CCP—and more importantly, Mao Zedong, with a way to exert influence on policymaking. However, the full realization of its functions faced several challenges. First, the Xinhua journalists responsible for NC were often mistrusted, as most of them were highly educated young people, who lacked revolutionary experience and came from bourgeois families. Second, NC’s independence was hampered by the increasing inferences of local party committees. Though the journalists could criticize local party committees and were backed by Hu Qiaomu (or more precisely—by Mao), in 1953 Liu Shaoqi granted the committees with permission to review NC manuscripts, because he believed them to be more trustworthy. These local interventions put journalists in a very risky position, especially when they disagreed with local authorities or made critical comments on local issues. This led to NC’s becoming a mouthpiece for local party committees, rather than a political tool of the central party committee. Finally, Mao used to constantly send instructions on policymaking to senior cadres via NC, reminding them of what they should focus on. This forced journalists to shift their attention from issues they considered important to what were essentially Mao’s concerns. In sum, NC was stuck between the pressures from both the central and the local committees of the party, which ended up putting it at a constant risk of disfunction. Ultimately, the plight of NC was a reflection of the structural problems in the CCP’s rule.

In the 1980s, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) chose to pursue a path of “shifting to a market-oriented economy,” and since that time, it has been held captive by contradictions between the centralized politics of “one-party rule,” and Chinese society, which has been becoming increasingly diverse accompanying economic development.

Up until the beginning of the twenty-first century, people accepted “liberal democracy” to be the default form of government, and, following the Tiananmen Incident in 1989, China viewed this as a weak type of political regime existing amid the era of the “third wave of democratization.” Nevertheless, the regime of the CCP is still in place even today. As such, questions concerning Chinese politics have shifted from the question of “when and how China will democratize” to the question of “why the regime of the CCP does not collapse.”

How has the CCP been confronting the above-mentioned contradictions between politics and society, and how has it been able to maintain its rule? Some previous studies have attempted to find answers to such questions by making use of the concept of “regime resilience.” One type of political institution that previous studies have targeted for analysis in order to assess “regime resilience” is “input institutions,” which are institutions in which people are able to submit their requests to leaders. It appears that input institutions have been contributing to the maintenance of political regimes.

The CCP initiated political reforms in the 1980s, and as part of this, it positioned “input institutions” as a key issue related to such reforms. As is well known, following the Tiananmen Incident in 1989, the CCP abandoned many ideas related to the political reforms that it initiated in the 1980s. One of the few ideas that it did not abandon was “input-institution reforms.” Rather than doing away with input-institution reforms, the successive leaders of the CCP since the 1980s have been treating these as important policy issues. In this study, we focus on the decisions made by these successive leaders in this regard.

In this study, we use official documents of the CCP to trace ideas related to the input-institution reforms that CCP leaders initiated in the 1980s, 1990s, and beyond, and changes made to concrete initiatives related to such ideas, and then we discuss the aspects of “1980s Chinese politics” that current Chinese politics has inherited and the aspects that it has abandoned. Through this work, we obtain hints for thinking about how the CCP has been confronting contradictions between politics and society, and how the CCP has been maintaining its one-party regime.

Opinions are divided among scholars about the corruption situation before China’s Reform and Opening. Some scholars argued that, as China was still under the planned economy at that time, all the planning, production, and distribution were controlled by the government, the corruption phenomenon was rare under such a rigid management system. Meanwhile, some other scholars pointed out that when the market economy of China was underdeveloped, the market did not function effectively as a mechanism for allocating resources, thus there was much room for “connection” (Guanxi) to enter in, which resulted in serious corruption. This paper will provide a perspective to this disputation by discussing an embezzlement case of the Heilongjiang Province.

This embezzlement case was made public under the “twin-hitting” (Shuang Da) campaign implemented in 1978 with the advocacy of Hua Guofeng. This paper also focuses on the exposing process of the case and points out the disadvantages of anti-corruption campaign.

After this embezzlement case, Liu Binyan, a famous writer and reporter of the People’s Daily, went to Heilongjiang Province, carried out field study, and wrote the reportage Between human and demon (Ren Yao Zhi Jian) which received a warm response. This reportage not only includes a lot of details of the embezzlement case that were not mentioned by the authorities, but also analyzed the basic social reasons of it. Since Liu Binyan’s argument was different from the mainstream opinion within the Party, a fierce debate took place afterwards, which revealed the limitation of anti-corruption activities led by the Chinese Communist Party.

By the discussion of the case, it can be concluded that there had been serious corruption under the China’s planned economy. And three reasons of corruption can be summarized: 1) “absence of ownership” caused by public ownership, 2) serious human dependence in bureaucratized companies, and 3) the over-importance of connection due to shortage economy. Meanwhile, the anti-corruption campaigns, like the “twin-hitting” (Shuang Da) campaign, tend to transform into private conflicts on the local level, thus weakening the effect of anti-corruption. Furthermore, the corruption exposure activities supported by the Party’s high level officials, like Liu Binyan’ reportage, would not be allowed by the Party when they challenged the reign of the Party. These are considered to be important reasons why China can not eradicate corruption.