China 2016: defending the legitimacy of the party-state’s authority. Domestic and international perspectives

The present article focuses on what seemed to be the main issue at stake in China during the year 2016: the legitimacy of the party-state’s domestic authority.1 Partystate’s legitimacy was indeed affected by an enduring and worsening economic slowdown and above all by various forms of protests that were overwhelming the institutional legal channels. The aim of the present article is firstly to assess the main symptoms of the party-state’s legitimacy crisis in the year 2016, and, secondly, to focus on the major strategies adopted by the Chinese Communist Party to deal with its legitimacy crisis. The article deals with the legitimacy crisis in terms of the party’s and its affiliated social organisations’ capacity to politically represent social groups and their interests. In 2016, labour protests in particular (which, however, did not represent the sole form of social protests) effectively suggested that industrial workers were critical of the role of the single trade union and, as a consequence, relayed more and more on alternative labour organisations and on outright illegal forms of collective protests. In that sense, although it would not be correct to claim that labour protests were threatening the stability of the political regime, the party-state’s legitimacy was nevertheless at stake because of the party’s evident inadequacy to represent workers’ interests and to promote the workers’ effective empowerment. The way the party-state was dealing with the malfunction of its corporatist stance was, indeed, in itself a further demonstration of its legitimacy crisis: repression was gradually taking the place of corporatism and one man-authority was trying to replace collective leadership. Significantly, these authoritarian regressions were being ruled and formalised by law. Additionally, the international perspective on some key selected issues, namely the ongoing BRI (Belt and Road Initiative, formerly called OBOR: «One Belt, One Road» initiative) and the arbitration question on South China Sea, showed that Chinese foreign policy too was substantially conditioned by domestic legitimacy issues.