Retrofitting Leninism: A Book Talk on China’s Control Regime

Drawing inspiration from the PRC’s Leninist origins, Dimitar Gueorguiev offers a novel explanation for how China’s ruling Communist Party maintains control despite facing increasingly complex governing challenges. The key to the CCP’s staying power, he argues, is its ability to integrate authoritarian control and mass inclusion—an organizational task now facilitated by technology. Relying on opinion polls, public records, media reporting, and interviews, Gueorguiev shows how public input feeds into political oversight and policy planning that exceeds the expectations of a typical top-down organization. The marriage between state control and social inclusion is at risk, however, with signs of political apathy and public mistrust pointing to an increasingly controlling yet disconnected surveillance state.