Speaker: Dr Aleksandra Kubat 

The Defence Studies Department (DSD) invites you to a research seminar featuring Dr Aleksandra Kubat, who will deliver a talk on "Organisational Adaptation of the CCP’s Cadre Training System." The session will examine how the Chinese Communist Party has adapted its cadre training strategies in response to evolving political and governance challenges, followed by a Q&A session.

Join us for this insightful discussion on the dynamics of political control, governance, and institutional change within the CCP.

Please note: This event will be held live online via Microsoft Teams, and in-person at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom. In-person attendance is limited to guests with authorised access to the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom.

Abstract

The cadre training apparatus is one of the earliest organisational structures developed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). With its main institutional framework—the Party School system—at the centre, it remains one of the primary functional Party bureaucracies and the only one specifically tasked with shaping and actualising Party cadres’ ideological, political, and professional skills.

From courses in Party theory to financial management education, in the post-Mao period, the cadre training apparatus accommodated shifts in Party theory, policy language, and regime priorities of subsequent leaders, all while maintaining its function of perpetuating the communist political regime. While scholars have previously commented on changes to training content visible in the post-Mao period, no systematic approach has emerged so far to elucidate how this specific Party apparatus accommodates ideological shifts and political reprioritisations.

To address this gap, this paper draws on organisational theory and the concept of field partitioning to capture the structural dynamics within the Party training apparatus as it responds to new political directives. Focusing on Xi Jinping’s tenure and his political programme, this paper demonstrates that when asked to accommodate new or conflicting content, the cadre training apparatus resorts to structural innovation, creating semi-independent organisational spaces where these new agendas are exclusively pursued. As a result, a specific sub-type of training institution emerges, designed to actualise new directives without undermining the existing ideology of the Party-state.

About the speaker

Dr Aleksandra Kubat is a Lecturer in Global Affairs at the School of Global Affairs, King’s College London. She was previously a Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the Lau China Institute, also at King’s. She earned her PhD from the Lau China Institute with a project focusing on the internal training bureaucracy of the Chinese Communist Party.

She currently teaches on the geo-economics of China’s engagement with the Global South, and her research examines Chinese authoritarianism and the ideational underpinnings of the PRC’s international behaviour.