Corruption and feudal hierarchy in the CCP

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) 20th Central Committee held its fifth plenary session in Beijing from Monday to Thursday last week, focusing on “persevering with full and rigorous party self-governance.”

It has been reported that a group of Chinese undergraduate and graduate students from more than 10 top universities, including Peking University, signed a joint petition, which appeared on school forums online, calling for the restoration of presidential term limits and the initiation of democratic constitutional amendments.

Although the post was later shared on social media, it was quickly removed, news reports said.

“Full and rigorous party self-governance” is the CCP’s political terminology. Since the “reform and opening up” policy era, corruption has served in great part to lubricate the wheels of economic development, which remains rife today.

Reuters last week reported that 25.8 percent of the full and alternate members of the Central Committee were missing from the gathering. Most of them were purged on corruption charges, a scale reminiscent of the decade-long Cultural Revolution.

Many of the figures missing this year are cadres originally promoted by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), who regards anti-corruption as one of his great achievements while also seeking to restore lifelong tenure for the leadership post through constitutional amendments.

The slogan of “full and rigorous party self-governance” has been used for decades, and never more so than in the Xi era, but it remains ineffective. That is because the problem is systemic. The CCP clings tightly to the leadership of the party, which is not only in the party’s interests, but also the interests of dictators.

Ever since the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957, I have realized that in China, one must not enter into dispute with any CCP member, because they possess the DNA of “party leadership” — even if it is only minute — while others do not. As a result, they are in a position of power over nonparty members.

Within the CCP itself, those with higher rank inevitably have power over those of lower rank, unless the latter has better political connections. As the CCP leadership has officially been written into the constitution, this means that the feudal hierarchical system is enshrined within the political structure of the country.

The influence of a non-CCP member, even if they hold a state-level position, is still lower than that of a section chief or a department head who holds membership.

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) members who are pro-CCP should check themselves and not follow the path of former KMT heavyweights such as Soong Ching-ling (宋慶齡), the wife of KMT founder Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙), or Fu Zuoyi (傅作義), the KMT’s commander in charge of the suppression campaign to root out the communists in northern China in the late 1940s.

They can also look at the case of Chinese author Guo Moruo (郭沫若), the “outside-the-party Bolshevik,” whose status was below even nonparty members, despite his fierce loyalty to the CCP and despite having served as Chinese vice premier from 1949 to 1954. His power increased when he resumed his CCP membership in 1958.

As long as the party leadership remains enshrined in China’s constitution, do not expect too much “full and rigorous party self-governance.” I wonder who can check Xi’s corruption and abuse of power inside the CCP?