Deng Xiaoping's Institutional Transformation: An Authoritarian Engineering Project from Mobilization to Control

This article introduces “Deng Xiaoping’s institutional transformation” as a core analytical concept and proposes a three-stage model of authoritarian governance—mobilization, development, and control—to reinterpret the structural evolution of the Chinese Communist Party’s ruling logic since the founding of the People’s Republic of China. It argues that the CCP did not experiment with fundamentally different political models across historical periods; rather, under changing conditions, it consistently sought to avoid the same outcome: the genuine transfer of political power to the people. From 1949 to 1989, mobilization-based rule relied on mass politics and ideological campaigns. While capable of extraordinary short-term mobilization, this model was inherently unstable and ultimately unsustainable, and by 1989 it was collectively judged within the regime as a high-risk governing path. It was precisely on the basis of this failure that Deng Xiaoping initiated a transformation of institutional significance. Instead of attempting to resolve legitimacy crises through political reform or renewed mass mobilization, he redefined economic development as a purely instrumental strategy—systematically accumulating fiscal capacity, technological resources, and organizational control, while simultaneously constructing structural buffers against external intervention. This process laid the necessary foundations for a later transition toward comprehensive control. Within this framework, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping should not be understood as representatives of competing political lines, but as functionally differentiated executors within a staged authoritarian design. Their respective historical roles were to expand the development phase, lay the groundwork for control, and complete the control-oriented governing system. In this sense, Deng Xiaoping’s transformation was not a reform leading toward openness, but a reconstruction of authoritarian rule carried out after the failure of reform itself—culminating in a control-based steady state centered on risk management, technological governance, and stability as an end in itself.