Purity and Corruption: Chinese Communist Party Applicants and the Problem of Evil

In contemporary China, university students play a key ideological role as the future vanguard of the nation and for this reason they are intensely courted by the Chinese Communist Party. This article addresses the moral ambiguities of this courtship for students, who face the paradox that while the party centre and collectivist authoritarian ideology invariably claims moral superiority, individual party cadres are frequently exposed as morally corrupt. The evil of cadre corruption becomes the nodal point for questioning party morality, a central stake in support of collectivist authoritarian ideology as well as in its denunciation. For students, the problem of evil within the force, representing the collective good is never resolved in either false consciousness or an unmasking of ideology. Doubt instead proceeds as two incommensurable interpretations of party morality persist in suggesting themselves, and this I suggest has important implications for our understanding of political legitimacy in authoritarian states.