사상과제로서의 ‘당치국가(黨治國家)’— 당치(黨治)국가: 시진핑 시대 통치구조와 정치의 변화에 대한 서평

Abstract

The purpose of this book review is to outline the content of Zhang Yunmi’s recently published book, Party Governed State: The Changes of Governing Structure and Politics in Xi Jinping’s Era, and raise a broader issue based on it. This book, Party Governed State, explores the phenomenon of concentration of power in the party, which is being strengthened in the Xi Jinping era. According to this book, the ‘concentration of power to the Party’, which has recently been strengthened, is the CCP’s response to changes in China’s internal and external circumstances, and its characteristic is that it gives the party extra-legal power to address the problems China is facing more recently and to solve it efficiently. According to the author, the Chinese Communist Party justifies its ruling strategy through the concept of ‘governance’ or ‘Zhili(治理)’, and the concepts of ‘governance’ and ‘Zhili’ are different concepts from those of Western democracies. The concepts of ‘governance’ and ‘Zhili’ used by the Communist Party of China have the advantage of giving the party a higher status than the state, speeding up the transformation of state administration and enabling more efficient response and management of internal and external crises. However, in spite of such advantages, the ‘Party Governed State’ also has the problem of gradually becoming more and more closed by restricting people’s freedom and strengthening social control. This book review examines this critical point along with the formula of political development and political decline presented by Fukuyama et al. It is necessary to examine the problem of the ‘Party Governed State’ not only at the level of the party itself, but also at the level of intellectual history. A supplementary view was suggested that the sustainability of ‘Party Governed State’ should also be found in the mechanism itself of the party and the state, not at the level of ‘people.’