Introduction

Abstract

This chapter will introduce the rationale and the general framework of our book. In this chapter, we introduce various initiatives proposed by President Xi that we are going to examine in the book, namely anti-corruption campaign, anti-four undesirable working styles and “Mass Line Education” programme. We explain why we combine these initiatives in order to determine the rationality, techniques and effects of President Xi’s initiatives. We will briefly introduce why these initiatives can be seen as an ethical revolution in the process of China’s legitimatization. We then introduce how we do this by critiquing the epistemological framework of contemporary legitimacy studies which is based on an array of binary oppositions. We then advocate to move beyond the comparative approaches and to adopt Agamben’s notion of remnant to show how anti-corruption, anti-four undesirable working styles and “Mass Line Education” programme can be seen as a systematic process of resocialization within the Party. We also briefly introduce our data sources and strategy of our analysis. Finally, we lay out how the book is organized.