How has China’s Communist Party survived for 100 years?

IT WAS MAO ZEDONG who decided that July 1st 1921 was the day that China’s Communist Party was founded. The actual date was July 23rd, when its first national congress was held in Shanghai (records were not to hand when Mao fixed the date). It was not the only communist organisation around in China and it only had 50 members. Few could have predicted that it would one day be running the country, much less that it would still be doing so today. So how did the Chinese Communist party take power and how does it plan to hold on to it?

China in 1921 was a poor country racked by civil war. Most of its 400m people lived in the countryside, but in industrial areas labour unrest was common. In the late 1920s the Communists were pushed into the countryside, recruiting peasants to their armies with promises of land once the landlord class was destroyed. Mao Zedong, who hadn’t studied much Marxism, was appointed leader in 1935 during the “Long March” to northern China to escape the nationalist Kuomintang forces, which then controlled most of China. In the second world war the Communists and the Kuomintang fought side-by-side against Japan and its allies before resuming their own war. On October 1st 1949 the victorious Communists founded the People’s Republic of China. As head of the party, Mao ruled until his death in 1976. He thought that a “class struggle” could lead China to a communist paradise. Tens of millions died in purges, famines and during the Cultural Revolution, which aimed to eradicate capitalist and traditional norms from society.

From the 1980s onwards, however, the Communist party played down the role of communism in the rise of the world’s most populous Communist state. Instead the party prioritised development over class struggle by restoring private business and property rights. Political debate and some criticism of Mao’s rule has, at times, been tolerated, although the late chairman’s face still adorns most Chinese banknotes.

China’s current leader, Xi Jinping, wants to re-establish Mao’s authority. Mr Xi has ordered the party’s 92m members to brush up on Maoist ideology and party history in the hope that a shared understanding will keep them in line. He has little truck for grumbling about communism’s past. About 8% of China’s adult population are members of the party, providing its eyes and ears in workplaces, neighbourhoods and campuses. Well-educated Chinese still flock to join. Mr Xi is purging the party of corruption and expanding its powers. Experiments with village-level democracy have been abandoned and surveillance technology embraced. Nationalism is shaping a new generation of Chinese. The party’s efficient crushing of covid-19 and rapid restarting of normal economic activity has been a propaganda boon. And it is limiting liberties in Hong Kong including freedom of speech and the right to peaceful protest.

In many ways Mr Xi is the antithesis of Mao and his desire for continuous revolution. Mr Xi calls for a “peaceful China”, meaning one where stability is the priority. In 2023 China’s communist party will have ruled for the same length of time as the Soviet one did before its collapse in 1991: 74 years. Mr Xi frets that his party has flaws, including corrosion by Western political ideas, corruption, factionalism and disloyalty. None of these suggests a party about to collapse. Mr Xi survives on ruthlessness at home while delivering the economic growth that many people want. It would be folly to bet on the party remaining a political force in 100 years’ time. But the world should be prepared for it to last for decades yet.

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Read our special report on the Chinese Communist Party at 100