CHINA: THE COMMUNIST PARTY AT 100

The party has made a huge difference in the lives of the people

Exactly 100 years today, the Communist Party of China was established. Faced with the challenge of the triumph of the liberal order and global capitalism, the party has had the resilience to oversee the transformation of China from a centrally planned communist economy to a free market economy. The Soviet Communist Party did not survive the chaotic experience of multi-party democracy that came in the wake of Gorbachev’s reforms. The result was the demise of the Soviet Union and the independence of its multiple component republics.

Founded in 1921 in Shanghai, the Communist Party of China has 90 million members in a nation of 1.389 billion people. In spite of this relatively slim membership, the party has been in total control of every aspect of the country’s life. It has thus traced the entire trajectory of Chinese history, weathering the crises and turbulence from the revolution to the era of unbridled communist rule and the various post Mao reforms to the present. Through all of these, the Communist Party has served as a stabilising force along China’s chosen path. It has guided the process of nation-building, the moulding of a distinctive national identity and the formulation of policies to adapt China to changing circumstances in the world. To have kept over a billion people faithful to its ideology in spite of massive economic prosperity and diversification of perspectives and influences is in itself a measure of the strength and resilience of the Communist Party and the succession of governments it has continued to inspire and guide.

However, the biggest achievement of the Communist Party is that it has maintained its strict unique control of both the state and society in China. It has regulated and controlled the pattern of political representation as well as the discipline and code of conduct of public officials in line with the spartan codes of the communist ideology. As the engine of state policy and governance principles, the Communist Party has remained in firm control of all aspects of state and society, dictating policy and regulating the conduct of the citizenry in areas as diverse as economic policy, science and technology, foreign policy, defence and security as well as family size and social conduct.

Under this regime of controls and regulations, China has recorded tremendous strides. It has migrated over 700 million of its citizens from poverty in a period of 10 years. It has become the second largest economy in the world with an external reserve of over 3.3 trillion dollars and maintained the highest economic growth rate of over eight per cent for 20 unbroken years in the 1990s. Today, China has the largest standing army in the world with a growing defence spending that has put the United States at a permanent alert. China’s huge manufacturing and export power has also placed it in the forefront of world trade which it uses to advance its diplomatic interests around the world.

In its prosperity and economic eminence, China has found a new voice and unique stature in the world. In Africa, China is the source of new credits and aid for infrastructure. This development is coming at a time when aid and support from the West has been in decline for years. It is also coming with relatively more generous conditions.

As the Communist Party therefore marks its centennial, it must brace up to challenges bred by its present achievements in the years ahead. It has built up an impressive record of economic success, political cohesion and international prominence in its first 100 years. The next 100 years may be defined by the struggle to manage the precarious consequences of prosperity and global pre-eminence.