Speaker: Victor C. Shih, Northwestern University
Incumbents in authoritarian regimes face a fundamental commitment problem: even loyal protégés cannot credibly commit to not overthrowing their patrons if they are powerful enough to do so. In response to this threat, authoritarian rulers can intentionally select tainted individuals to the upper echelon because they have a harder time allying with others. Professor Shih will show both quantitative and historical evidence that Deng Xiaoping inherited the "counter revolutionary splittist" faction of Zhang Guotao and made use of it to control the army in the 1980s. All but one of the ministers of defense in the 1980s, as well as many senior People’s Liberation Army officers, shared the deep historical stain of splitting from Mao's main column and following Zhang Guotao south to Sichuan during the Long March.
Victor C. Shih is a political economist at Northwestern University specializing in China. Professor Shih received his doctorate in government from Harvard University, where he researched banking sector reform in China. He is the author of Factions and Finance in China: Elite Conflict and Inflation (2009), which explores the linkages between elite politics and banking policies in China. His current research concerns Chinese banking policies, exchange rates, elite political dynamics and local government debt in China.
Image
