The Communist Party of China (CCP) celebrates its 100th anniversary on July 1. Founded in July 1921, in Shanghai in the French concessions, this anniversary marks a major political milestone for the Party-State. It is the one of the two centennials events invoked by the party after 19th Party Congress in 2017. The other one is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 2049.
This anniversary has more political significance to China, and even greater for China’s President Xi Jinping personally to stamp his leadership as the most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, one of the founding members of the CCP, and Deng Xiaoping, the reformist. Adorn in a Mao-suit, Xi’s address at the Tiananmen Square in Beijing this morning, called people to rally together with the party leadership and help ‘rejuvenate’ the Chinese nation.
At the institutional level, the CCP is not a guerrilla Leninist organisation. If revolutionary credentials were necessary before the 1980s, the reform period stressed cadre professional education and training. Today, it is a highly-professionalised technocratic party that manages both party and State. The higher CCP leadership appears the most educated, and puts many other political parties to shame for its educational and professional diversity. Most of the 25-member Central Committee Politburo and its standing committee have post-graduate degrees, and many of them doctorates. The key to success and promotions are not only personnel connections — guanxi — but also performance and education are essential qualifications.
Ideologically, the party has been very pragmatic. With every leadership succession, new ideological canons are being formulated to be inclusive and suitable as per the changing socio-political and economic dynamics by shedding its dogmas for new sources of ideological legitimacy. From Marxism-Leninism to Mao Zedong’s Outlook to Xi’s Outlook in the new era, the task of the party to re-orient its ideological canons to Chinese cultural ethos has been profound, even though if it is repetitive — like old wine in new bottle.
The latest reports indicate the century-old CCP has 95 million members, and with more than 24 million aged below 35 years, it is a young party. With less than 60 members in 1921, its burgeoning membership is remarkable. With the party relaxing membership to other professions and occupations since the reforms began in 1980s, the membership increase has been quite substantial, especially when compared to Xi’s early tenure.
However, this increase in numbers have not reflected a change in higher echelons of the party apparatus. Blatant tokenism seems to still be prevalent in the party’s gender and ethnic-sensitive policies. The party as a vanguard of the Chinese people, in fact, is increasingly becoming a gravy train of the men, and mostly the dominant Han.
So what is really the CCP? More than just a political party, it has moved from a revolutionary party to a ruling party and is now a ‘governing party’. As known to many, it is not a monolith, even if it is above the law. In fact, it seeks to claim a ‘multi-party cooperation’ under the leadership of the CCP with other ‘democratic parties’ functioning as interest and deliberating organisations.
It has been an agent of transformation — domestic to international affairs, with what sinologist and political scientist Manoranjan Mohanty says ‘success stories and traps’ without forgetting the original missions of the party — buwang chuxin (never forget why you started). The party’s dexterity to adapt and be adept during crisis and challenges has been laudable to the chagrin to its detractors. Whether a natural calamity such as earthquakes, pandemics such as SARS and COVID-19 or political crises such as protests, the institutional capacity of the Party-State to fight back and resolve these issues is noteworthy, despite criticisms abroad.
Under Xi, the party is a unifier of the Chinese people and an epitome of national rejuvenation. Aggressive nationalism and party loyalty have become the backbone of the CCP’s survival strategies.
However, the challenges for the party is manifold, and these strategies can backfire in an increasingly hostile international environment. In the domestic sphere, party nihilism-disenchantment, breaking of established institutionalised norms, economic disparities, factional interests, and corruption and graft are issues that still plague the party. Xi, becoming the ‘core’, has outgrown the organisation. Likewise, the non-anointment of a successor, breaking from the convention institutionalised by Deng and other survivors of the Mao era atrocities can lead to adhocism in the party and a personal failure to Xi.
However, a one-man panacea in a 95 million strong governing party can be a serious threat to its survival in the long run. The road ahead is bumpy, and the CCP apparatchiks know this!
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