Will the CCP continue to lead China as a communist party?

Will the CCP continue to lead China as a communist party?

By I. Wibowo

JAKARTA (JP): Zheng Ming magazine, in one of its 1996
editions, carried a report which disclosed a meeting of the top
elite party members in Beijing on June 18, 1996.

In that meeting, Jiang Zemin, the general party secretary,
delivered a speech, which was considered "classified", on the
current condition of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). (Zheng
Ming, July 1996, pp. 6-8.)

The title of the speech was The Development and Situation of
the Rank and File of the Chinese Communist Party. If one could
have used one word to summarize Jiang's speech, probably the word
pessimism was most appropriate. Jiang admitted that the party
lost much of its identity and fighting spirit, existing at the
organizational level, the cadre level and the rank and filer
level. For instance, he said, "the party has already lost a firm
political direction, unable to provide leadership in front of the
construction of socialism".

Actually, this was a meeting to mark the 75th anniversary of
the founding of the CCP. However, this assertion by Jiang Zemin
was not quite a big secret. Everybody in China knew very well
that the party was heading toward a deteriorating state. The
party could no longer play a leading role or be a vanguard party
on which the whole population could rely.

Lenin, the originator of the concept of a vanguard party,
said, "the party is the highest of all forms of organization of
the working class and its mission is to guide all the other
organizations of the working class". In addition, it should
"consist of the finest members of the class, armed with an
advanced theory, with knowledge of the laws of the class struggle
and with the experience of the revolutionary movement". All of
these features are evidently absent from the current members of
the CCP.

Why, then, are there so many Chinese applying to enter the
party? The explanation given by the document said it has
something to do with the fact that the party has become a ruling
party. Once a party rules a country, more and more people will
join the party, not so much as to share its mission, but as to
seek a good career. "On the lips they say that they want 'to
fight for the cause of communism' but in actuality, they only
want to use the party as a ladder to become officials."

The deterioration of the CCP is actually a natural process
which every ruling party will eventually have to confront. The
more pertinent question to a party with a claim of monopoly of
power is: to what direction is it heading to?

In the past ten years, the CCP has made a very interesting
shift. The best way to see this change is to look into what is
happening in the countryside where the majority of the population
lives and where the majority of the party branches operate on a
day-to-day basis.

In the past, in unprecedented fashion, the CCP, through its
party secretaries, was able to penetrate deep into the
countryside and exercise nearly complete control, and this was in
fact the best available strategy which guaranteed its
totalitarian rule. After reform in 1978, this seemed to be no
longer the case.

Nowadays, according to various investigations, almost all
party secretaries in the villages pay little attention to village
affairs, but more attention to business, i.e. the village
enterprises. They have become entrepreneurs despite being a
communist cadre. The village affairs, accordingly, are put under
the care of cadres from what is called mass organizations, such
as a villagers' committee, women's federation or youth league.
Only occasionally would the party secretaries go down and answer
practical problems, unsolved by the other cadres. Solving the
conflict on the one-child policy was one such example.

Party secretaries tend to take a very indifferent attitude to
issues which are at the heart of communist ideology, such as
religion. Today, more and more peasants pray to Buddha or Jesus,
while many more accept Taoism. The same attitude is also adopted
in relation with Chinese traditional practices, namely reviving
the organization of clans. Today, peasants are busy rewriting
their genealogical record again, something which was forbidden
during Mao's time. There is, indeed, a very strong impression
that the countryside is enjoying a high degree of freedom, even
to express one's opinion in public as in demonstrations and
protests. Some reports even suggest that party cadres are joining
in the fray.

This is probably the situation lamented by Jiang Zemin in 1996
and after. But, in terms of strategy, this shift in policy
actually displays a new approach by the CCP. Instead of putting
everything under strict control, it is opening up a zone of
indifference where the population can maneuver but not quite.
Instead of putting the cadres' party secretary under strict
demand of moral purity, it opens up a corridor of concession
whereby the cadres are absolved to make money as a recompense to
their service in the village. To the young and ambitious peasants
who are unable to pursue a high career outside their village,
this new approach sounds like an attractive trade-off.

There is clearly a transformation from a vanguard party to a
rearguard party, and from a party committed to march in front to
a party standing in the rear line, opening a zone of indifference
and a corridor of concession. This change, though, is so smooth
that it is not immediately observable nor entirely different from
the big-bang change that occurred in Eastern Europe in 1989 or
the Soviet Union in 1991. The CCP is perhaps conducting not only
socialism with Chinese characteristics, but also vanishing with
Chinese characteristics. The CCP is slowly and inconspicuously
undergoing a metamorphose.

To commemorate the CCP's 78th birthday on July 1, 1999, there
will be a big banquet in Beijing, attended by all the elites of
the party. In anticipation of this celebration, Zhang Yan's
article in the People's Daily argues forcefully that the party
will continue to lead the whole nation into the 21st century. He
rejects a pessimistic view and shows how the CCP has made
progress in rebuilding the party. (Renmin ribao, June 22, 1999).

While this show of confidence is important, Zhang Yan
certainly misses the crucial point. The question is not whether
the CCP will continue to lead China, but whether or not the CCP
will lead China as a communist party. All evidence points to the
direction that the CCP is moving toward what Samuel Huntington
terms "an established one-party system". As such, will this mean
that China will not be different from Iraq or Suriah?

The writer is the head of the Center for Chinese Studies,
Jakarta.