Why China’s Communist Party Lasts

By Sunny Lee
Korea Times Correspondent

BEIJING ― As China gears up for the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, which falls on October 1, world attention is once again fixated on the Middle Kingdom with no less zeal than it showed for the Beijing Olympic Games.

The Chinese government actually attaches more importance to this national holiday than the Olympics with the nation's birthday party coming with tighter security than that for the Olympics.

In fact, the history of modern China since 1949 has been largely the history of the Communist Party, which won a civil war against the rival Kuomintang, resulting in the latter's retreat to Taiwan in the same year that brought the party to power.

Thus, any understanding of China should accompany an understanding on the Communist Party because the elite ruling class forms the country's leadership that determines the course of the nation.

In history, many rising powers achieved their goals through non-peaceful ways. Can China become an exception to this? This will be also determined by the Communist Party as well, giving all the more reason to pay more attention to it.

But then, as a single party state, many pundits wonder, how the Chinese Communist leadership has been able to last so far, in great contrast to many other ``socialist'' countries including the former Soviet Union and eastern European countries.

A piece this week in the Global Times, the international news arm of the official People's Daily, titled, ``The Communist Party Leadership Draws the World's Interpretation,'' answered this very question.

The news piece also surfaced while the Communist Party's fourth plenum was in session, which is an annual meeting of the nation's top 300 cadres, including President Hu Jintao, to discuss major policies. This year, the meeting is primarily aimed to shackle government corruption and streamline the process of ``party-building'' as its internal goals.

Outwardly, it also seeks to earn more understanding and recognition on its one party rule, which is often challenged by the international media over its legitimacy.

China defends itself by saying that there are in fact other political parties. The Chinese foreign ministry Web site, for example, says, ``China is a country of many political parties. Apart from the Communist Party, which is in power, China has eight non-Communist parties.''

But outside critics say all these minority parties are, by rule and in practice, subservient to the Communist Party, and are lacking real democracy, based on a truly multi-party platform.

Beijing adds that it is also working on an ``intra-party democracy,'' saying the giant party has as many as 76 million members who express a wide spectrum of diverse opinions, just like any democratic nation.

Critics say different voices ``within'' the Communist Party is more a reflection of factional politics that have existed for a long time. For example, the BBC noted, Chen Liangyu, the Communist Party chief in Shanghai, who was arrested and sentenced to 18 years in prison on corruption charges, was in fact a scapegoat of power struggle between China's two formidable leaders, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao.

``The West will never, no matter what, be able to open its heart to understand the Communist Party,'' the article frustratingly said. ``Among all the China factors, the Communist Party is one of the most difficult to understand.''

Despite the pessimism, there have been a steady flow of observers who have been advocating for more understanding of the party. For example, Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, once said, ``If one wants to understand China's politics, he must understand the complexity and multi-faceted role the Communist Party plays.''

Those who make their career researching Chinese politics and the Communist Party, the article said, go through different stage-based changes, from ``ignorance'' to ``prejudice'' to ``correct view'' on the party leadership. For example, it took the example of the renowned American expert on China, David Shambaugh, the dean of the China Policy Program at George Washington University.

Shambaugh's changes on the party, gleaned from his different publications, are characteristically indicative. In 1993, it said, he ``scoffed at China's ambiguous attitude toward the U.S.'' In 2000, ``he acknowledged China's progress but still had some suspicion on the Communist Party.''

Then, in 2008, Shambaugh's depiction of the party made a notable turnaround. For him, it is now ``a party that is full of wisdom and that conducts ceaseless self-reflection on the reasons for failure of other Communist countries with a firm determination not to follow the same downfall,'' it said.

Furthermore, citing a sinologist at Princeton University, the piece said the reason for the survival of the party lies in ``the Communist Party's continual adaptation in terms of its ideology and structure as well as its rewriting of the standards for the Chinese politics.''

The article also said ``teaming up for the Communist Party is in fact for teaming up for deciding China's own path.''

But, China under Communist rule also faces gargantuan internal challenges. Foremost among them is the widening wealth gap. David Lampton, a China specialist with Johns Hopkins University, points out that its leadership has to manage a huge nation, which makes up as much as 20 percent of the world population. But then, inside China, there are actually ``four Chinas,'' he said, divided along the wealth line. These four are ``a very wealthy China, a relatively wealth China, a not very poor China and a very poor China,'' he said.

At different periods of time, the Communist leadership wooed a certain group. For example, during 1978 to 1985, it promoted the so-called ``Let the farmers become rich first'' campaign, giving many economic incentives to rural farmers. This policy invited complaints from urbanites. Since 1985, China then switched its economic model to promote the development of urban areas, this time inviting grumbling from rural residents. ``So, it's very difficult for China to solve all the people's problems at the same time,'' it said.

Eventually, the obvious key question is to ask whether the Communist leadership can handle this and many other challenges, such as civil unrest, unemployment, pollution and even traffic jams?

Shambaugh thinks so. In his latest book, ``China's Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation,'' he concludes that the party, with an almost brutal practically oriented mindset under the skin-deep Marxist cover, armed with its flexible adaptability, will remain ``resilient and will continue to retain its grip on power.''

sunny.lee@koreatimes.co.kr