By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com

Since the mid-2000s, “authoritarian resilience” has been a fashionable theory put forward by a host of famous Western Sinologists for explaining the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ability to hold on to power.

The theory goes that the authoritarian regime has strengthened its proverbial “mandate of heaven” by making smart policy adaptations to win over disparate sectors of the polity.

For example, Harvard University Professor Elizabeth Perry has in a recent paper credited the CCP with using “pragmatic populism” — and other policies characterized by “a pronounced openness to experimentation and innovation” — to maintain its perennial ruling-party status.

Other China watchers, however, have argued that the CCP administration, which has mothballed all political and administrative reforms for more than a decade, is mainly relying on a police state-style control apparatus — plus appeals to nationalism — to stay in power.

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