Few issues affect the future of China--and hence all the nations that interact with China--more than the nature of its ruling party and government. In this timely study, David Shambaugh assesses the strengths and weaknesses, durability, adaptability, and potential longevity of China's Communist Party (CCP). He argues that although the CCP has been in a protracted state of atrophy, it has undertaken a number of adaptive measures aimed at reinventing itself and strengthening its rule. Shambaugh's investigation draws on a unique set of inner-Party documents and interviews, and he finds that China's Communist Party is resilient and will continue to retain its grip on power. Copub: Woodrow Wilson Center Press
In this provocative and illuminating account, Richard McGregor offers a captivating portrait of China’s Communist Party, its grip on power and control over China, and its future. China’s political and economic growth in the past three decades has been one of astonishing, epochal dimensions. The most remarkable part of this transformation, however, has been left largely untold—the central role of the Chinese Communist Party. In The Party, Richard McGregor delves deeply into China’s inner sanctum for the first time, showing how the Communist Party controls the government, courts, media, and military and keeps all corruption accusations against its members in-house. The Party’s decisions have a global impact, yet the CCP remains a deeply secretive body, hostile to the law and unaccountable to anyone or anything other than its own internal tribunals. It is the world’s only geopolitical rival of the United States, and is primed to think the worst of the West.
Official Chinese narratives recounting the rise of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tend to minimize the movement's international associations. Conducting careful readings and translations of recently released documents in Russian, Japanese, and Chinese, Ishikawa Yoshihiro builds a portrait of the party's multifaceted character, revealing the provocative influences that shaped the movement and the ideologies of its competitors. Making use of public and private documents and research, Ishikawa begins the story in 1919 with Chinese intellectuals who wrote extensively under pen names and, in fact, plagiarized or translated many iconic texts of early Chinese Marxism. Chinese Marxists initially drew intellectual sustenance from their Japanese counterparts, until Japan clamped down on leftist activities. The Chinese then turned to American and British sources. Ishikawa traces these networks through an exhaustive survey of journals, newspapers, and other intellectual and popular publications. He reports on numerous early meetings involving a range of groups, only some of which were later funneled into CCP membership, and he follows the developments at Soviet Russian gatherings attended by a number of Chinese representatives who claimed to speak for a nascent CCP. Concluding his narrative in 1922, one year after the party's official founding, Ishikawa clarifies a traditionally opaque period in Chinese history and sheds new light on the subsequent behavior and attitude of the party.
The outbreak of a deadly new form of pneumonia that began in Wuhan, China, in December 2019 has shown the world that the regime in Beijing poses the most serious threat to world peace and freedom since the Soviet Union. Early missteps by China’s ruling Communist Party — repressing doctors who sought to alert China and the world to the dangers of the novel coronavirus and permitting millions to travel out of Wuhan for a holiday — caused the global pandemic now devastating populations and economies around the world. In this important essay, Bill Gertz shows how China’s lies and obfuscations imperiled the world.
Examining the past, current, and potential future roles of the Communist Party in governing China The Chinese Communist Party and its polices touch nearly every aspect of life in China and dominate some. An often-quoted current phrase—one with roots in the era of Mao Zedong—says “the Party leads all.” Under the leadership of Xi Jinping, the Party determines much of what is permitted and prohibited in the country's social, economic, and political activity, as well as China's increasingly consequential foreign relations. Even so, the Communist Party always has faced limits on what it can control, and it may encounter new obstacles ahead. This book addresses important questions about the current and future roles of the party: Has Xi's tenure brought a qualitative increase in the pursuit, or achievement, of party control? How is party rule shaped and exercised by internal party dynamics, the party's control over the state, society, economy, foreign affairs, government institutions and rules, and ideology? How serious are the threats to party strength and success posed by Xi's approach to power, corruption in the party's ranks, a rapidly changing society, a fraught international environment, or a possibly overly ambitious agenda for party control? Leading scholars examine these questions from several disciplinary perspectives, each focusing on a key area of the party and its efforts to lead, control, or influence the world around it. This book offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date assessment of the party's roles in China's economy, government, civil society, legal system, military affairs, and foreign policy. It does so at a critical moment, with the full contours of the Xi Jinping era in China becoming more evident and as the CCP reaches its 100th anniversary and nears three-quarters of a century in power. It will be essential reading for all scholars, students, and policy-makers interested in contemporary China.
This collection of documents covers the rise to power of the Chinese communist movement. They show how the Chinese Communist Party interpreted the revolution, how it devised policies to meet changing circumstances and how these policies were communicated to party members and public.
This collection of documents covers the rise to power of the Chinese communist movement. They show how the Chinese Communist Party interpreted the revolution, how it devised policies to meet changing circumstances and how these policies were communicated to party members and public.
