Programming China

The Communist Party’s autonomic approach to managing state security

In this China Monitor, Samantha Hoffman, independent consultant and MERICS Visiting Academic Fellow, investigates the use of new technologies to secure the Communist Party’s monopoly on power. Hoffman analyzes China’s “holistic concept of state security.”

The goal is a self-regulating system capable of pre-empting external as well as internal threats to the party-state. This happens through the process of "social management,“ which creates a feedback loop between the party and society, similar to Mao Zedong’s "mass line.“ Hoffman argues that in the modern application of this process, China’s leadership relies on approaches from complex systems engineering theory.

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