Most analysts study leadership succession in communist states as a "crisis" which ensues after the death of a dominant leader. This study takes an alternative approach. It is a survey of provisions for leadership succession in the People's Republic, of China. This involves a comparison of the strategies and motivations of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping in providing for their own succession. Deng Xiaoping's more extensive provisions for leadership succession during the CCP's transition towards a more institutionalized one-party bureaucratic rule are likely to be more durable than Mao's provisions in the earlier period. Nevertheless, guarantees of smooth and regularized succession, especially of protégés promoted on the basis of personal ties within the leadership core, may be impossible to obtain. Mao's provisions were aimed largely at what he saw as a probable, but deplorable, bureaucratic future of the PRC. Deng, on the other hand, perceives an element of opportunity in the succession process. He has tried to provide leadership that will, in his estimation, be better able to bring about China's modernization. In both leaders' provisions for succession, the elevation to the status of "heir apparent" of individuals has been a political liability to those individuals, especially when their promotion is perceived to be based largely on personal ties to the dominant leader. This liability becomes more pronounced in a period of bureaucratic, collective leadership. Because of his shifting policy preferences, his status as charismatic leader, and the ambitious nature of his protégés, Mao Zedong was unsuccessful in providing for his own succession. Deng Xiaoping, on the other hand, has been successful in cultivating a reserve of young, well-educated cadres. These provisions, because they are extensive and exist in a more subdued, consensus-oriented political environment, may well be Deng's most enduring legacy. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

“The Political and Cultural Economy of Sightseeing” examines how personnel within the state tourism bureaucracy struggled to balance the use of foreign tourism as a form of political, historical, and cultural representation with the demands of developing a revenue-generating service industry in a socialist economy. I argue that tourism, particularly the practice of sightseeing, played an important role in the creation of the “New China”: a re-imagination of the Chinese nation-state as a political, economic, social, and cultural entity under socialism. By focusing on particular elements of the state’s production of the tourist experience, including the formulation of itineraries, the regulation of tourist photography, and changing notions of customer service, this dissertation reexamines the ways the political and economic goals of the state converged during the Mao era (1949-1976) and through the early period of market reforms under Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s. This dissertation traces the development of tourism infrastructure in the first three decades after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, locating this history at the intersection of public diplomacy and economic development. It will help further our understanding of modern Chinese political and economic history, as well as the broader history of socialism in the twentieth century. “The Political and Cultural Economy of Sightseeing” focuses on the production of tourism rather than the consumption of it. It follows three main groups of actors in the tourism industry of the New China: tourism industry officials; the rank-and-file workers who fed, transported, and guided the tourists; and, to a lesser extent, the tourists themselves. Tourism officials, tourism workers, and tourists all had their own conceptions of the New China and the place of tourism in it. Tourism officials needed to know what the tourism industry meant for the politics and economy of the New China before they could show that new nation to others. Tourism workers needed to understand where their labor fit into the narrative of the New China in order to serve the tourists and serve “the people.” Finally, foreign tourists gazed upon the landscape of the New China in ways that tourism planners, guides, and service workers often struggled to anticipate and manage. Together, these three groups built a tourism industry and contributed to the establishment of a new national narrative.