The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during the Reform Era

29 September 2021, NIICE Commentary 7412
Dr. Anil Kumar

From a very humble beginning, 100 years ago in a small house of Shanghai, in July 1921, with only 50 young men and inspiration of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and Russian Revolution of 1917, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has now reached more than 95 million members. There are many observers who have been predicting the collapse of the CCP since its ideological senior partner, the CPSU met its end in 1991. However, it is more than 30 years since then and it is hardly evident that the CCP is going to meet the same fate any time soon. On the contrary if one were to analyze the Chinese history from the First Opium War (1839-42), one has to admit that the last four decades have been the best. When the CCP established the People’s Republic of China (PRC), China was a poor, food insufficient and war-torn country with a life expectancy of only 41 years.  From being the ‘Sick Man of Asia’ today China led by the CCP is aspiring to overtake the US in both wealth (Fu guo) and Military Power (Qiang bing) and reemerge as  the Middle Kingdom of  21^st century. Hence, now, the question is what is it that differentiate CCP from the CPSU? Thus, the article tries to dwell upon the factors which have contributed to the success of the CCP during the reform era and provide the prognosis of what the future holds for the CCP.

Sunism

Sunism is a great inspiration behind most the achievements of the CCP post-reforms. To illustrate, the term “rejuvenation” figures prominent in Xi’s China Dream. However, he is not the pioneer rather it was Dr. Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925) during the Chinese Revolution of 1911, who started the slogan of “rejuvenating the Chinese nation” (振兴 中华) zhenxing zhonghua). Similarly, the Chinese nationalism in its contemporary sense was pioneered by Sun.  For the CCP, the nationalist Sun Yat-sen is a “Forerunner of the Revolution.” He was one of Mao Zedong’s first political heroes. The pioneer of rich China is not Deng, rather it is Sun. In the early years of the 20th century, he envisioned a lively role for markets and entrepreneurs in China’s modernization, while he expected the state to control the economic heights, such as finance, heavy industry, and infrastructure. Reform-era has more or less followed this path. Western companies today complain about forced technology transfers, but the idea is hardly a new one. It was Sun who had advocated that foreign companies should sell back their business to their Chinese owners.

Today China has the world’s largest high-speed rail network, covering more than 20,000 kilometres; it is expected to be more than double to 45,000 kilometres by 2030.  This rail network is also a key component in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The inspiration for this scale of rail network emanates from Sun lament in 1912 at China’s lack of a significant rail system, which he saw could unite geographically diverse regions and form the backbone of economic development.

China, during the reform era, has realized the biggest poverty reduction goal in human history. It has lifted 800 million people from the absolute poverty. Last year Xi declared that China has achieved the ‘miracle’ by eradicating extreme poverty. With this feat, the CCP has realized Sun’s second principle of ‘People’s Livelihood’. Thus, in its 100 years history the CCP has tried to fulfill two of Sun’s three principles, namely, ‘Nationalism’ and ‘People’s Livelihood’. Regarding the third principle of Democracy, one can argue that the CCP under Deng started the election at the village level in the 1980s.

Self- Rectification

The CCP has faced so many crisis right since its birth, whether it is Northern Expedition, Long March, Second Japanese War, Korean War, Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, Tiananmen Square, Asian Financial Crisis 1997 and Global financial crisis in 2008. With this, they have has emerged wiser and mature and the credit for this should goes to the Self-rectification mechanism that is inbuilt in the CCP.  For example, in its most recent publication, “The CCP: Its Missions and Contributions” it stated that “in the course of leading China’s revolution, reconstruction and reform to great success, the CPC has made mistakes and experienced setbacks,” adding that “the CPC confronts its shortcomings and errors. After the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong offered to take responsibility for the mistakes. The Party leadership explained to other political parties and non-affiliates that the CPC, and particularly its Central Committee, should take the main responsibility for the errors and offered sincere self-criticism”.

Continuously Reinventing for the New Eras

The CCP has been reinventing itself. It has not sit on its laurels (like the Indian National Congress Party), rather it has been consistently reinventing itself for the every new era that it has came across.  To illustrate, the CCP was established as the revolutionary party in 1921 to end the era of ‘semi-colonialism and semi- feudalism’ (1840-1949) in China.  In 1949 it turned out to be a governing party when it embarked upon land reforms, Soviet-aided industrialization, economic planning and others. Then in 1978, with Open Door policy, Deng started the process of coupling the socialist Chinese economy to the Capitalist US economy.  This was a big departure that the CCP made from its senior ideological partner, the CPSU, that did not bother to join the Business Internationalism of the post-WW II era.

In the wake of turmoil in the entire communist world in the 1980s and early 1990s, the CCP was quick to realize that military security alone is not enough to guard the regime and state. So it gave a new security concept, which was based on comprehensiveness (quan mian hua). The CCP security discourse included, ideological security, economic security, science, Technological security and Environmental security.

By overcoming the financial crisis in 2008, the CCP has proven that its socialist economic system is more reliable and safer compared to Western capitalism, and by sustaining a fast-economic growth pace and helping the US to tide over the crisis by buying US bonds, China has also helped the world economy to prevent the escalation of the crisis, some analysts noted.

The latest round of the CCP reinventing itself transpired was the 19th Party Congress in 2017. It was then that China officially declared a paradigm shift, namely from headlong pursuit of economic development to the goal of realizing a  “balanced development” and “common prosperity.” According to some experts, this suggests redistribution of wealth in China. This shift did not occur all of a sudden. Rather, it was the culmination of socio-economic developments of the reform era. With the wealth generation in China problems like, political corruption, wealth inequality, and environmental degradation accompanied. In fact, political corruption was the key issue after the 18^th Party Congress.

The CCP’s Own path of ‘Making China Great Again’

The CCP has been remarkable at adopting and adapting. It means that the CCP either rejected a foreign idea or even if it adopted it, it adapted it to the Chinese historical experience. A case in point is that unlike the US allies in the Asia-pacific that adopted both the US capitalism and democracy during the Cold war, China adopted and adapted former (like it did with Buddhism and Marxism) and the latter it summarily rejected. Given the way CCP functions, it would have not accepted foreign ideas like glasnost and perestroika without evaluating them against China’s own historical experience, a blunder Gorbachev fatally made.  Liberal democracy is an alien concept to the Chinese political culture. What the various past Chinese ruling dynasties have practiced, can be described as ‘Confucian Democracy’ where “the people are the roots of the country, and when the roots are firm the country is tranquil.” (民惟邦本，本固邦宁) . The reason why CCP’s one party rule might last for a long despite all the criticism from the West, is because it is in tune with China’s 2000-year-old imperial history where one dynasty succeeds the other and within the dynasty one emperor succeeds the other. In fact, in the wake of helplessness of the liberal democracies in the west in front of the COVID-19, and China’s effectiveness in handling it has enhanced the acceptance and legitimacy of the CCP rule. A survey conducted by the University of California’s China Data Lab, the support among the Chinese people for the CCP has rose with the average level of trust in the central government increasing from 8.23 in June 2019 to 8.87 in May 2020, measured on a scale of 1 to 10.

Under the CCP’s current model, China holds “Two Sessions” every year and the National Congress of the CCP every five years, reflecting on achievements and possible mistakes on a yearly basis and then on a five-year basis. Indeed, according to some observers, China’s institutional arrangements are generally much more pro-active than the Western ones in initiating self-corrections.

What the CCP is doing, is not very different from what imperial Japan-another Confucian society- practiced. It got modernized but not westernized. (中学为体,西学为用). Like imperial Japan, China is not behaving as per the Hegelian model where each country has to follow post-Enlightenment European experience to get modernity. In fact, its approach is diametrically opposite. CCP sees the last two hundred years of the Western ascendency as a historic aberration. All its polices, if analyzed closely, shows that it is tenaciously working towards reinstating China’s 2000 year old imperial history that started with the Qin Shi Huangid’s Qin dynasty (221 BC – 206 BC). The last 40 years under the CCP rule, if any thing, should be seen a as harbinger of this great restoration exercise.

The CCP scorecard during the reform-era looks very impressive yet like any sphere of human life, there are some challenges that have emerged, especially since last decade. The repercussions of de-institutionalizing the party by again bringing in the Leninist idea of party ‘core’ and ending the term limits for Xi for the long-term survival of the CCP are yet to be seen.  Internationally, the biggest liability the CCP has created for itself and China going into the post-COVID-19 world is that it has revived the China threat theory (中国威胁论) that had subsided post-9/11 and it is here to stay for some time.

Dr. Anil Kumar is Visiting Professor of Chinese History Program at Doon University, India.