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.