The Chinese Communist Party

By Tania Branigan
The Guardian, May 20, 2009

Edited by Andy Ross

With more than 74 million members, the Chinese Communist party is the largest political party in the world. The party has largely transformed itself "from a mass organization designed for mass mobilization and ideological campaigns, into a technocratic leadership corps", said Professor Jeremy Paltiel of Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.

Outwardly, the party remains rigidly ideological; members are drilled in Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Three Represents, and current president Hu Jintao's Scientific Development Outlook. To many, what the party really stands for is personal advancement, social stability, and national unity.

For the last two decades, the party's mission had been to "maintain the brain but change the content", suggested Anne-Marie Brady, associate professor of political science at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Experts have been called in to study political change overseas, culling lessons from European socialists.

The government has modernized its techniques as well as its cadres. It is now an assiduous user of opinion polling and sophisticated spin techniques, showing greater responsiveness to public opinion. Allowing people more space to challenge the status quo may help to perpetuate the system, providing outlets for frustration and dissent.

To the confusion of some western observers, Hu's speech to the last party congress used the D-word more than 60 times. "They would like to talk about democracy with Chinese characteristics. My problem is that no one really can offer a definition of what that is," said Dr Yawei Liu of the Carter Center's China Program, which works with Chinese officials to improve elections and civic education.

Professor Sun Liping, a sociologist at Tsinghua University, and the doctoral supervisor of vice-president and heir apparent Xi Jinping, warned earlier this year that China's greatest danger was rising inequality and alienation: "The fundamental cause ... is the marriage between political power and capitalism. The two have joined hands in China ... We thought power would be constrained in a market economy. But we have now seen that power has acquired higher value and greater space for exertion."

People in China complain bitterly about official corruption, inefficiency, and brutality. But, as the government reminds them, multi-party elections do not guarantee good governance or stability. After decades of turmoil, many seem willing to settle for a quiet life and economic well-being. There's little sign that the current economic downturn is leading to widespread social unrest, still less open opposition to the government.
 

AR  I think the CCP is here to stay for a century or ten. It'll be them versus an uneasy alliance of JCI monotheists for command of the control holodeck for Spaceship Earth.