Quick questions on Governance, legitimacy and performance explained: H2 China Studies

The dominant source of legitimacy since 1978 has been economic performance. The implicit bargain of the reform era is often summarised as prosperity in exchange for acquiescence: the population accepts the absence of political voice in return for rapidly rising living standards. The record underpinning this claim is genuinely extraordinary. Decades of high growth transformed China from one of the poorest countries on earth into a middle-income society, and the state's own poverty programmes report that several hundred million people moved out of absolute poverty across the reform period.

The second major source is nationalism. After the legitimacy shock of 1989, the leadership launched a sustained "patriotic education" campaign in the early 1990s that foregrounded the "century of humiliation," the period of foreign domination from the Opium Wars to 1949, and cast the Communist Party as the force that restored Chinese dignity and is leading the "great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation." Nationalism is attractive to the regime because, unlike growth, it does not depend on this year's economic figures; it offers a source of loyalty that is robust to economic downturns and that channels popular energy toward the nation and against foreign critics rather than toward domestic reform.

Define performance legitimacy and give one example of the evidence the Party uses to claim it. [4 marks]

Explain why the Party intensified nationalist legitimacy after 1989. [12 marks]

"Slowing growth is the greatest threat to the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party." How far do you agree? [20 marks]