U.S. Army War College,

 The Heritage Foundation, 

 and American Enterprise Institute and American Enterprise Institute

CHINESE CRISIS MANAGEMENT

Compiled by

Mr. Andy Gudgel

The Heritage Foundation

Key Insights

• Chinese Communist Party (CCP) decisionmaking is based on consensus opinion within the party. This 

cumbersome method can result in paralysis and does not allow Chinese leaders to react quickly to crises.

• The decisionmaking process within the CCP is compartmentalized and opaque, even to lower-level 

Chinese offi cials. Also, offi cials are reluctant to give the CCP “bad news.” This has led to incomplete 

or incorrect information being passed to high-level decisionmakers.

• The signals sent by the Chinese government, both to domestic and foreign audiences, are not as clearcut as the government believes them to be.

• China’s crisis management strategy is geared towards obtaining the maximum political advantage for 

China, as opposed to resolving the crisis. China tries to defi ne the crisis on its terms in order to shape 

the resolution favorably.

 Over 50 experts on China and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) gathered at Carlisle 

Barracks, Pennsylvania, from October 1-3, to attend the 2004 Chinese Crisis Management Conference. 

Cosponsored by the Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, and the U.S. Army War College, 

the conference participants discussed a framework for analyzing Chinese decisionmaking during crises, 

and examined historical examples of domestic, regional, and international crises and how the Chinese 

government dealt with them.

 As China has become more involved in regional and international politics, the potential increases for 

it to have to deal with crises, both internal and external. To predict how China will react to future events, 

it is necessary fi rst to understand how the CCP and the government have dealt with past crises.

 This conference established a framework through which Chinese crisis management style could be 

determined, and then analyzed China’s reaction to events such as the Tiananmen Square protests and the 

multiple Taiwan Strait crises, as well as international crises, such as the Belgrade Embassy bombing and 

the EP-3 incident.
2

Decision by Committee.

 Both culturally and politically, China is a nation of 

consensus. Agreement (or the withholding thereof) is 

the means by which parties raise and address individual 

and group concerns, negotiate, and make decisions 

with which all parties can agree. Unfortunately, this 

method of decisionmaking is not well-suited for 

sudden, unexpected crises.

 The CCP’s handling of the Tiananmen Square 

student protests is an excellent example. Soon after 

the death of Hu Yaobang, the reformist former General 

Secretary of the CCP, students from several universities 

in Beijing seized the opportunity to protest corruption 

within the CCP and to support reform. When the 

protests began, the CCP quickly became paralyzed 

with factional infi ghting over how the incident should 

be handled. The lack of immediate reaction on the 

part of the government emboldened the students, who 

then occupied Tiananmen Square. The occupation 

increased friction between internal CCP factions, with 

some supporting the students (either tacitly or directly) 

and others calling for an immediate end to the protests. 

Lack of further reactions allowed the students to 

gain support among Beijing residents. The infi ghting 

reached the point where Deng Xiaoping, ostensibly 

retired from political life, was forced to weigh in, and 

martial law was declared. But by this point, the entrance 

of the PLA into Beijing caused the protests to become 

ugly, with Beijing residents murdering soldiers, and 

soldiers murdering civilians, culminating in the violent 

clearing of Tiananmen Square.

 Had the CCP acted early on, when the students 

began protesting, or immediately after they occupied 

the square, bloodshed easily could have been avoided. 

However, the paralyzed CCP decisionmaking process, 

due to factional infi ghting, allowed a small and 

relatively localized incident to become a major crisis.

Left Hand, Right Hand.

 While superfi cially similar, in the sense that 

government inaction allowed a crisis to magnify, the 

handling (or mishandling) of the SARS epidemic in 

China in 2002-2003 owed more to the opacity and 

compartmentalization of the Chinese government than 

factional infi ghting.

 The fi rst case of SARS occurred in Guangdong 

Province in mid-November 2002. While several reports 

appeared in Chinese newspapers at the outset, by the 

end of February 2003, the Guangdong Provincial Party 

Secretary had imposed a media blackout.

During this time, SARS had spread to Guangzhou, the 

provincial capital, as well as Hong Kong. March 2003 

saw the disease continue to spread to Beijing, Hanoi, 

Inner Mongolia, Taiwan, Singapore, and Canada. After 

a visit from the World Health Organization in late 

March, China agreed to report on the number of SARS 

cases regularly. However, when a doctor at a Beijing 

hospital leaked information that contradicted Ministry 

of Health pronouncements, the Chinese government 

was forced to admit to underreporting the cases.

 In early April 2003, Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao took 

the unprecedented step of receiving briefi ngs from 

respected nonparty experts. In a hasty meeting of the 

politburo the next week, Hu Jintao admitted that the 

government had lied and pledged the CCP to an antiSARS campaign. By the end of the month, a massive 

public-health effort, as well as a major shake-up at all 

levels of the CCP, was underway.

 The severity of the SARS outbreak in China, as well 

as its spread to other countries, can be attributed to the 

opaque decisionmaking system within the CCP. Party 

offi cials, not able to predict the results of the information 

they provide to higher levels of the CCP, fear to give 

information that would refl ect poorly on themselves or 

the Party. Consequently, the severity of problems are 

often understated, or even not mentioned at all, when 

talking with superiors. By imposing a media black-out, 

the Guangdong Provincial Party Secretary attempted 

to sweep the early stages of the SARS epidemic under 

the rug. In the end, the uninformed public went about 

their business, inadvertently adding to the number of 

infected areas. When the CCP became aware of the 

problem, their reaction was to fi rst deny that there 

was a problem at all, then provide spurious data on 

the number of cases. The CCP would only admit the 

problem and initiate concrete measures to control the 

epidemic after they were openly contradicted by leaked 

information.

Coming In Loud and Clear?

 The fractured nature of Chinese decisionmaking 

makes it very likely that the CCP (or elements within the 
3

Chinese government) will send signals that, while they 

seem clear, may be misinterpreted by their audience.

 For example, during the early student protests 

that led to the Tiananmen Square crisis, the Public 

Security Bureau facilitated the students’ marches 

by directing traffi c. However, within a few days, the 

same policemen injured several students when they 

used night-sticks to break up a crowd that refused to 

disperse. Not long after, the People’s Daily called for 

a swift, strong response to the protests. Similar articles 

in other papers also implied that the students were 

being used by reactionaries as a front to attack the 

Communist Party. However, simultaneously, numerous 

CCP bulletin boards in Beijing were encouraging party 

members to join the students.

 Such contradictory events certainly emboldened 

the students. On the one hand, they were condemned 

in the press; on the other, assisted by elements of the 

Chinese government.

 In a similar vein, in its dealings with the United 

States during multiple Taiwan crises, China has both 

condemned the United States as an instigator, and 

implied the need for Washington’s assistance in dealing 

with Taipei.

Seeking the Advantage.

 The implied objective of crisis management is to 

a resolve a crisis before it leads to war. However, it 

often seems that the objective, in China’s case, is to 

maximize the advantage. Positions are taken as much to 

gain political leverage as much as to reduce tensions.

 In the lead-up to the 1990-91 Gulf War, the United 

States worried that China would use its veto power 

in the UN Security Council to block a resolution 

authorizing military action against Iraq. China used 

ambiguity over its position to receive a White House 

meeting, as well as a renewal of Most-Favored-Nation 

trade status. However, owing to the fact that a veto was 

tacit support to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the Chinese 

promptly sidestepped the issue by abstaining when the 

vote was taken.

 On the Taiwan issue, China has insisted that 

Taiwan accept a priori the “one-China principle” in 

reunifi cation negotiations. Taiwan has refused, as 

it would be an automatic concession of its interests. 

China then feels justifi ed in saying that Taiwan, and not 

Beijing, is delaying better cross-strait relationships.

 China often tries to defi ne the parameters of a 

crisis on favorable terms to maximize benefi ts while 

minimizing concessions. In April 2001, a U.S. EP3 reconnaissance airplane and a Chinese fi ghter jet 

collided near Hainan Island, killing the Chinese pilot 

and forcing the crippled EP-3 to make an emergency 

landing at a nearby PLAAF base. From the outset, 

the Chinese claimed that the U.S. plane had caused 

the collision, then landed on their sovereign territory 

without permission. By drawing out negotiations as 

long as possible, and repeatedly demanding an apology, 

China tried to make the United States appear contrite, 

so as to show that China could “stand up” to it.

Conclusion.

 While the secretive nature and lack of available 

documents makes it hard to predict exactly how the 

CCP will react in a crisis, one can look to China’s 

handling of past crises to get an idea of the trends and 

themes of its crisis management strategies.

 Structurally, the CCP (and hence the government) 

bases its decisionmaking on group consensus. This 

has had several negative impacts on China’s handling 

of crises. First, when confronted with a problem, the 

CCP waits to react until a group decision has been 

made, allowing small problems to magnify. Second, 

the opaque and byzantine nature of this process makes 

CCP members and government offi cials afraid to give 

their higher-ups bad news. In the case of the SARS 

crisis, bad information led to incorrect decisions by 

the CCP, allowing the disease to spread internally 

and internationally. Third, the fractured nature of the 

decisionmaking process causes the CCP to send “mixed 

messages” about its intentions, as different parts of the 

government say and do different things.

 China’s objectives in the process of crisis 

management can be different from those of other 

parties. China will often use a crisis to enhance its 

political prestige, show its power, or wrest concessions 

from the other side. From the beginning of any crisis, 

the Chinese will attempt to frame the debate on their 

terms in order to steer the crisis to a more favorable 

outcome.
4

*****

The views expressed in this brief are those of the author 

and do not necessarily refl ect the offi cial policy or 

position of the Department of the Army, the Department 

of Defense, or the U.S. Government. This conference 

brief is cleared for public release; distribution is 

unlimited.

*****

More information on the Strategic Studies Institute’s 

programs may be found on the Institute’s Homepage 

at http://www.carlisle.army.mil/ssi/ http://www.carlisle.army.mil/ssi/ or by calling (717) or by calling (717) 

245-4212.