The Political Science Interpretivist

Introduction: The Approach Helen Yaffe has written an informed and insightful study of Cuba’s current political and economic situation. That is, from the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s to the time of publication in 2020. Her approach includes drawing from scores of interviews she conducted, mostly between 2010 and 2019. (279) She interviewed Cuban officials, intellectuals, and ordinary citizens living in Cuba so that she could understand and explain how these Cubans understood their own political and economic conditions. She also marshals a great deal of quantitative data which re-enforces and further illuminates how these Cubans saw themselves and their conditions. Political scientists will note that Yaffe doesn’t organize her study around the concept of the political system. In part, this is because her emphasis is more on the economic development of Cuba, its challenges, successes, and persistent needs, rather than the policy making pro...

Introduction: the Primary Factions The official explanation for Mr. Hu Jintao’s removal from the last meeting of the 20 th National Party Congress is that he wasn’t feeling well, so an usher assisted him in getting out of his chair and walking out of the Great Hall of the People.* But that explanation seems contrary to the appearances that anyone can see on the numerous You Tube videos of the event. So I offer a different interpretation. Hu Jintao was once the most powerful man in China. He was the Communist Party General Secretary from 2002 to 2012. At the same time he was the President of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and he was the civilian Commander in Chief of the Chinese military. Then between 2012 and 2013 all these offices were given to Xi Jinping in a peaceful transfer of power. Xi Jinping was made the Party leader because he was acceptable to the two major factions in Chinese politics. These are the “Radicals” and the “Liberals.” The Radicals are the pro-Maoist hardl...

On October 16 th , this year, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will begin its 20 th National Congress. This is the biggest event of 2022 for the CCP, because the Congress only meets every five years. It will last for between a week and 10 days. It takes place in the Great Hall of the People, next to Tiananmen Square, in Beijing. Among other things, the delegates will vote on the New 5 Year Plan, vote on revisions to past 5 Year Plans, and elect the Party’s Central Committee from among their membership. The Central Committee is the governing body of the CCP. It has about 300 members. The Committee members will then select its General Secretary, or chief executive officer. Most China Watchers expect to see Xi Jinping elected to his third term as General Secretary. No Presidential Election Little known to Western media is that no presidential election is held by a Party National Congress. According to the Constitution for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) the president is to be elec...

  Warnings about the 2022 Midterms that Biden had Better Heed                                                                                                                                                               Introduction   Earl Ofari Hutchinson has written an interesting, well researched, and quite readable book. As the title* indicates, the book is about the importance of midterm elections in the US political process, and about why the voter turnout is often a fraction of that for presidential elections. The book came out in September 2022, and the discussion in it concerns th...

Introduction                                                                                                                                      Foreign Affairs magazine has exposed its anti-China capitalistic and nationalistic partisanship in its current 100th Year Anniversary issue. Since the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th Congress will start on Sunday, October 16 th , the magazine seems to think the moment propitious for criticizing Xi Jinping because of the attention the event will attract. [1] No “equal time” articles were published in this issue to provide balance, or to cast Mr. Xi in a more favorable light.  During the 20th Congress, the 2300 ...

Introduction After it all, “I thought that China wasn’t as bad as Americans tended to think.” (182) That’s the conclusion of billionaire Desmond Shum, author of Red Roulette* – his autobiographical account of how he and his wife, Whitney Duan, rose from rags to riches in the go-go years of China’s developmental miracle. Whitney and the Road to Wealth Born in the late 1960s, during the Cultural Revolution, both Whitney and Desmond received a normal education as children. She then enrolled in a military university in 1986. (73) As an outstanding student, she obtained employment as an executive’s assistant in “a real estate development company run by China’s military.” (74) At the time, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had numerous business interests, and Whitney started making connections with the elite among them. Later, the PLA was ordered to divest itself of these businesses as an anti-corruption measure by CCP General Secretary, Jiang Zemin in 1997. (75) The year before that, pe...

Introduction* American perceptions of China lean towards the negative. Taking a morally judgmental stance, “Half of Americans now say China’s policy on human rights is a very serious problem for the U.S. – up 7 percentage points since last year. … And nine-in-ten Americans say China does not respect the personal freedoms of its people.” 82% of Americans have a negative view of China. 64% of conservative Republicans view China as an “enemy” – far more than any other US group. Currently, 55% of Americans as a whole see China as a “competitor.” 34% agree that China is “an enemy.” And, a measly 9% regard China as a “partner.” [1] Yet, there is nothing in the way of the US and China seeing themselves as partners in trade and cultural exchanges, like the US sees itself with European countries; that is, nothing but misunderstanding. How China is like us – that is, we Americans I think it is very unfortunate that the American people understand China in the wrong way. The public’s understanding...