Shaken Authority: China's Communist Party and the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake

This book examines the political mechanisms at work in the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and the broader ideological energies that drove them. The book takes Chinese Communist Party ideas and discourse as central to how that organization formulates policies, defines legitimacy, and exerts its power. It argues that the Communist Party has never abandoned its conviction that discourse can shape the world and the people who inhabit it. It demonstrates how the Communist Party's planning apparatus continues to play a crucial role in engineering the Chinese economy and market construction, especially in the countryside. It takes a distinctive and original interpretive approach to understanding Chinese politics, and demonstrates how Communist Party discourse and ideology influenced the official decisions and responses to the Sichuan earthquake. The book provides a clear view of the lived outcomes of Communist Party plans, rationalities, and discourses in the earthquake zone. The three case studies presented each demonstrates a different type of reconstruction and model of development: urban–rural integration, tourism, and ecological civilization. The book emphasizes the need for a grounded literacy in the political concepts, discourses, and vocabularies of the Communist Party itself.