Communist Party of China (CPC)

The Communist Party of China (CPC), also called the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and ruling political party of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Inspired by the Russian Revolution, the CPC was founded in 1921 by Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao, following a lengthy civil war against the Kuomintang, its main rival. The party was created on the principles of Marxism–Leninism, or more precisely, the signification of Marxism–Leninism (officially known as Mao Zedong Thought, referred to in the West as Maoism). During the 1960s and 1970s, the CPC experienced a significant ideological separation from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Despite China’s market reforms in the late 1970s, the modern Chinese state remains a purely Leninist system, like those of Cuba or North Korea. The party’s exercise of power relies on three pillars: control of personnel, propaganda, and the People’s Liberation Army.

Background

The CPC is, officially, organized on the basis of democratic centralism, a principle created by Russian communist politician and theorist Vladimir Lenin, which involves democratic and free discussion on policy on the condition of unity in maintaining the assent upon policies. The highest body of the CPC is the National Congress, convoked every fifth year. In practice, the delegates rarely discuss issues at length at the National Congresses. Most substantive discussion takes place before the congress, in the preparation period, among a group of top party leaders. When the National Congress is not in session, the Central Committee is the highest body. To direct policy, the committee appointed a Politburo of 24 members; the top 9 members of the Politburo constitute the Standing Committee. Both Politburo and Standing Committee are vested with most duties and responsibilities, since the Central Committee meets just once a year.

The Twentieth Central Committee was elected by the Twentieth Congress in October 2022. The committee is composed of full members and alternate members elected through the method "more candidates than seats." A member has voting rights, while an alternate does not. Below the Central Committee is a network of party committees at the provincial, special district, county, and municipal levels. Through these committees and its leaders the party controls all levels of government, since a local Party Committee is responsible to the Party Committee at the next higher level. To join the party, an applicant must be eighteen and spend a year as a probationary member. In contrast to the past, when emphasis was placed on the applicants’ ideological criteria, the current CPC stresses technical and educational qualifications. The Chinese Communist Party is the second largest party in the world, after the Bharatiya Janata Party (India), which claimed the first position in 2015.

The party leader holds the offices of General Secretary, Chairman of the Central Military Commission, and state president. Through these posts, the party leader is the country’s paramount leader. Xi Jinping, who led the party through the 2010s and 2020s, was elected in 2012 during the Eighteenth National Congress. Jinping was reelected during the Nineteenth National Congress in 2017 and the Twentieth National Congress in 2022.

Overview

Founded in 1921, and a significant political force by the mid-1920s, the Chinese Communist Party was a partner of the main Chinese Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang (KMT) until 1927, when the KMT changed its politics and almost exterminated the communists. From 1927 until 1949 the CPC fought a civil war against its Chinese enemies, but also a war against the Japanese in the 1930s and 1940s, during which it was officially an ally of the KMT.

After 1945, in the culmination of the long civil war, the CPC mounted a conventional war against the KMT, which brought it victory. It took almost twenty-eight years of struggle and sacrifices, along with millions of casualties, for the communists to win. When they came to power, they were already experienced in governing China’s provinces and had a massive, dedicated, and disciplined army. By 1949, the top Communist Party leadership was unified behind Mao Zedong, who was determined to modernize China. The Communist Party and the Red Army were further tested by the Korean War when China fought against the United States from 1950 to 1953.

The CPC avoided major internal disputes for ten years after coming to power. Even after a serious conflict between top leaders and a purge in 1959 (brought about by the catastrophic policy called the Great Leap Forward), the leaders who lost power were not brutally treated. Deadly purges came with the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Similar to Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union, Mao began a purge seventeen years after the triumph of the communist revolution and for the same reasons, namely the failed rural policies and the general sentiment that senior leaders were responsible for the mistakes. The Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s in China and the Stalinist purges had, however, different outcomes and were carried out in opposite ways. They also marked the beginning of a rivalry between the two parties and countries. Stalin’s purges were secretive, while the Cultural Revolution was out in the open and mobilized millions of Chinese, primarily youth, bringing anarchy to the country. The Cultural Revolution was a disaster, and within a few years after Mao’s death in 1976, his version of communism was demolished.

Unlike the communist organizations of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, the Chinese Communist Party was able to resist the tide of democratic protest in the late 1980s. Because of the political instability that followed the death of its longtime chairman, Mao, the CPC sought to lessen somewhat the monopoly of power by individual leaders. CPC leader Deng Xiaoping was the dominant national figure until 1992 and is considered the architect of a new type of socialist thinking, with a more pragmatic approach to market economy practices.

Therefore, central control of the economy was loosened, while entrepreneurial industry and trade expanded, especially in southwest China. The Eighteenth Central Committee announced a wide range of reform programs aimed at completing the construction of a moderately prosperous society and expelled many members due to corruption in the party’s history.

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