Remaking the loyal cadres: the Ideological Responsibility System in China’s new era

There have been noteworthy changes in the ways in which the Chinese Communist Party assess, use, and manage its cadres under different historical conditions. Such changes are associated with the varying agendas for ruling China under the administrations headed by Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping, respectively. This paper systematically examines pertinent official documents from the past four decades to reveal the role played by ideology in the CCP’s cadre selection and management mechanism, as well as the resulting incentives and pressures for the Chinese cadres. Findings show that the reinforcing of political correctness through the finely designed Ideological Responsibility System (yisixingtai zerenzhi) effectively increases the cadres’ loyalty to the central authority. However, there are also unintended and possibly negative implications with regard to some of the related changes.