The CCP is a paradox. The myths and realities behind the veil of the party grow every day and trying to dispel fiction from fact will likely elude China watchers for decades.
“Socialism with Chinese characteristics” is a term as arcane as the organization that crafted it, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Now, the CCP is finding itself in a decadeslong identity crisis – one in which outside observers do not know how to define it.
In the United States, the classification of the CCP often finds itself colored by ideological divides. Listen to talk radio and you might be warned of the CCP’s plans to resurrect the Soviet Union and strangle the free world under the hammer and sickle. Others dismiss the members of the CCP as money-loving capitalists who continue to call themselves communists solely in order to save face.
The nature of the CCP becomes more mysterious the closer one gets to China. The Chinese media and government doesn’t present the image of some socialistic empire or threatening red scourge, but of China as being a prophet and savior to its people. The image of the CCP on display here is that of a party seeking to redeem China from its century of humiliation and lead it down a path toward socialist prosperity via the power of the market.
Chinese characteristics
Chinese socialism used to be more defined. First it was Maoism and what Chairman Mao determined to be the true path to communist glory. Mao had his own interpretation of Marxism and provided a guide for “good” Chinese communists to follow.
Mao’s death led to what some believe to be an overcorrection on the part of the CCP. If you asked China’s talk show hosts about the nature of the CCP during Mao’s reign, arguments that Mao’s China wanted to lead the charge for communist supremacy might have had merit.
Mao broke from the Soviet Union in the 1960s when Khrushchev was in power, believing the Soviets to be too revisionist and soft toward the West. Mao believed China should be leading the communist world.
That vision failed, but ironically it led to the restoration of relations between China and the US, the first major step toward the creation of the China of today. Mao’s communist puritanism died with him and a China that came to embrace trade followed. The result is the China of today: A China of corporations, billionaires and foreign investment.
It is this China that casts serious doubts on the narrative of communist domination heard in some segments of the American political sphere.
But while China may be capitalistic in practice, the ruling CCP still preaches socialism. Marxist theory is still taught in schools, corporations pledge to modify products to reflect socialist practices and the CCP still mandates that often heretical policies are steppingstones toward communist paradise.
In a recent essay in Foreign Affairs Magazine, Cai Xia, a former professor at the Central Party School of the Chinese Communist Party, reflects on the ideological gymnastics party members must perform. She writes that thought leaders in the CCP must work to connect contemporary Party policies – policies that are often antithetical to communism – to orthodox Maoism. The former indoctrinator has since fled China and sought refuge in the US.
Maoism Inc.
This kind of reconfiguring demands a depth of intellect that is uncommon. Luckily for the CCP, there is no shortage of that.
Another one of the great paradoxes of the CCP is its shift from being a coalition of peasants to an entourage of billionaires. Of the more than 1.4 billion people in China, only around 80-90 million are CCP members. Considering the CCP’s omnipotence in China, one would think that everyone would want to be part of the club.
One reason why the number is relatively low is because the CCP does not make joining easy. Admission into the party requires a series of classes in communist history and Maoist theory, tests and interviews. Being successful has been compared to gaining admission into the Ivy League.
Often, the reasons for joining the CCP are vocational. Students know that having CCP membership on their resume makes them more competitive, professionals know that joining the managerial class is often determined by party membership and business owners know how vital being a good communist is for being successful in business.
China’s richest citizens are often party members and multiple billionaires served in the People’s Congress. There will likely be more, as China produces more billionaires than any other country.
This is a far cry from the revolutionary peasants that led the Communist Party to total victory and not everyone is satisfied with China’s reforms. Illegal political parties such as the Maoist Communist Party of China have been established to oppose revisions and return China to Maoism.
The people’s empire
For all the changes the CCP has made over the years, it still maintains many of the same enemies.
Few organizations can claim to have killed more nationalists than the CCP. Communism is supposed to be antithetical to nationalism and the history of the CCP reflects this. It was the star against the sun: Chinese communists fought Chinese nationalists intermittently for more than two decades, with a break in between for Chinese communists to focus on killing Japanese nationalists instead.
Beijing is still antagonistic toward Tokyo and Chiang Kai-shek’s descendants in Taipei – though not for the same reasons.
Like the Nietzschean warning about staring into the abyss, the CCP now resembles its nationalist enemies more than ever. Beijing has spent years demanding and creating more territory in the South China Sea encompassed by its nine-dash line. This has put the People’s Republic at odds with countries that could have been allies against the West, including communist-controlled Vietnam.
China has spent billions investing in the infrastructure of other countries and expanding its global trade initiative, the Belt and Road. That is money that could have been invested in the countryside.
The PRC has found partners in theocratic Iran and nationalistic Russia and found enemies in former colonial victims like India. It is nearly indisputable that Beijing favors Seoul over Pyongyang.
Chinese media outlets such as the Global Times promote hard-line nationalistic views and Chinese film increasingly portrays China as a global actor and, with a rising number of military bases and ports in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, it is hard to dispute that China is not one.
Some of this nationalism might be pragmatic.
E.W. Gentry Sayad, a founder and managing partner of Sayad and Associates LLC, a law firm specializing in international law and business consulting, told TMS that President Xi Jinping’s promotion of nationalism to deflect from economic issues has become the focus of the Chinese population.
Survival of the fittest
The CCP is a paradox. The myths and realities behind the veil of the party grow every day and trying to dispel fiction from fact will likely elude China watchers for decades.
What is known is the Darwinian nature of the party. Many have been predicting the CCP’s fall for years, like the Soviet Union before it. But the Communist Party of China has learned to evolve when necessary. One wonders what Mao would think of the modern CCP, a party that has embraced the free market and sent billionaires and millionaires to represent the Chinese peasantry.
But in reality it doesn’t matter what Mao would think. He’s not here, while the Communist Party of China very much is.
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