On 1 July 2021, the Chinese Communist Party celebrated the centenary of its founding. The anniversary served as an occasion for the party to commemorate its many successes, such as retaining control over the Chinese state since 1949 and presiding over the most significant economic expansion in human history. It also reaffirmed the core role that the party’s general secretary, Xi Jinping, plays in governing the country. Yet many aspects of the party’s behaviour also suggest that it fears the years ahead may be turbulent.
One hundred years ago this month, a small group of revolutionaries founded the Chinese Communist Party in secret on a boat floating in a river near French-controlled Shanghai. So fireworks are lighting up the skies of Shanghai, Beijing and other major cities this month in celebration of the CCP’s centennial. Now, 100 years is a long time. And to mark this moment, we wanted to have a conversation about the party’s role in the past century of Chinese history
Not only has it survived far longer than its many critics predicted; it also appears to be on the up. When the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, many pundits thought that the other great communist power would be next. To see how wrong they were, consider that President Joe Biden, at a summit on June 13th, felt the need to declare not only that America was at odds with China, but also that much of the world doubted “whether or not democracies can compete”.
During the economic heyday of the early 1990s and into the first decade of the new millennium, it seemed that the CCP and its socialist ideology had taken a back seat. Policies focused on expanding the output of the “workbench of the world,” increasing prosperity and consumption. But a technocratic-pragmatic succession of leaders like Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao came to an end when Xi Jinping took power in 2012.
Nowadays, Xi rules the Party and the country with a tight grip. And not only does the CCP control all relevant state institutions, it has evolved to become a huge and influential corporation with interests that reach into all areas of the Chinese economy. Some experts have coined the term “CCP Inc.” for this powerful ecosystem.
Chinese citizens consider CCP membership an important career prerequisite, even in the private sector. The CCP sees China ahead of other nations in the battle against the ongoing pandemic and is set to celebrate its centenary extremely assertively.
One thing hasn’t changed, though: Many Western politicians and business executives still don’t get China. Believing, for example, that political freedom would follow the new economic freedoms, they wrongly assumed that China’s internet would be similar to the freewheeling and often politically disruptive version developed in the West. And believing that China’s economic growth would have to be built on the same foundations as those in the West, many failed to envisage the Chinese state’s continuing role as investor, regulator, and intellectual property owner.
In China, however, growth has come in the context of stable communist rule, suggesting that democracy and growth are not inevitably mutually dependent. In fact, many Chinese believe that the country’s recent economic achievements—large-scale poverty reduction, huge infrastructure investment, and development as a world-class tech innovator—have come about because of, not despite, China’s authoritarian form of government. Its aggressive handling of Covid-19—in sharp contrast to that of many Western countries with higher death rates and later, less-stringent lockdowns—has, if anything, reinforced that view.
China has also defied predictions that its authoritarianism would inhibit its capacity to innovate. It is a global leader in AI, biotech, and space exploration. Some of its technological successes have been driven by market forces: People wanted to buy goods or communicate more easily, and the likes of Alibaba and Tencent have helped them do just that. But much of the technological progress has come from a highly innovative and well-funded military that has invested heavily in China’s burgeoning new industries.
Thus July 2020 polling data from the Ash Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government revealed 95% satisfaction with the Beijing government among Chinese citizens. China has become an economic titan, a global leader in technology innovation, and a military superpower, all while tightening its authoritarian system of government—and reinforcing a belief that the liberal narrative does not apply to China.
And when Xi announced, in 2017, that the “three critical battles” for China’s development would fall in the areas of reducing financial risk, addressing pollution, and alleviating poverty, he also made it clear that the objective of these reforms was to solidify the system rather than to change it. The truth, then, is that China is not an authoritarian state seeking to become more liberal but an authoritarian state seeking to become more successful—politically as well as economically.
