Welcome to the Party
Reviewing Richard McGregor’s The Party: the secret world of China's communist rulers
When designing a World War II battleship, or any large naval vessel with turrets, stability was never far from the chief engineer’s mind. Stability affects accuracy, since the fire control officer must factor the ship’s roll rate into his trajectory calculations. Even the smallest miscalculation can compound into a miss over a twenty-mile flight path.
There are two ways of achieving stability, or a lack thereof. The first method is to make the ship wide relative to its draft, so that the vessel is steady in the ocean. A chunky ship is a steady ship in calm waters, but once the sea gets rough the boat may unexpectedly list to one side and then violently right itself. The motion happens too fast to compensate for when firing.
The second design option is to make the ship narrow enough that it easily rolls. A narrow ship is consistently unstable, going from side to side in a steady rhythm. While it’s prone to making sailors seasick, this design has its advantages. The ship’s movement is so predictable that the fire control officer can account for it, allowing the turrets to be fired even during a storm. The wide ship may be more comfortable in calm seas, but as soon as the waves hit the flexible ship proves its superiority.
Communist regimes have historically been wide ships. Stability is maintained at all costs, right up until the citizens storm the palace and take the head commie out back for a 3 o’clock appointment with Doctor Kalashnikov. Volatility can only be stored, not dispelled, and a regime suppresses motion at its own risk.
Acutely aware of the failings of previous communist experiments, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has retrofitted their organization’s structure to be more like the narrow ship. The CCP’s most important modification of communism was in giving the private market room to grow. The Party is also surprisingly tolerant of protests (provided that they don’t get too large), they’ve allowed China to become heavily integrated with the global economy, and Chinese citizens are allowed to travel abroad without jumping through too many hoops. None of these things were possible in Soviet Russia, for example.
Luckily for China, Deng learnt early on a lesson that nearly every other failed socialist state neglected to heed, that only a boisterous private economy could keep communist rule afloat.
China’s economic growth has been nothing short of miraculous, which begs the question: how can an ostensibly communist state allow a robust private economy without losing control over the population? The CCP came up with a rather elegant solution. They’ve relaxed restrictions on business formation and trade, but enforce strict control over the people.
Any sufficiently large business must have a political coordinator, or multiple coordinators. Corporations are expected to pay lip service to Party doctrine, important executives are encouraged to join the Party, and the Party may retire business leaders who violate communist doctrine. I liken the CCP’s control over the private sector to letting a pack of dogs out in the forest. They’re free, but every animal is wearing an electric collar and can be electrocuted if it gets out of line.
In place of Mao’s totalitarian terror, the Party has substituted a kind of take-it-or-leave-it compact with society. If you play by the Party’s rules, which means eschewing competitive politics, then you and your family can get on with your lives and maybe get rich.
But let us not dwell on China’s economic ascendancy, since the topic has already been widely covered. Instead, let’s begin with an autopsy of the Chinese Communist Party to uncover the exact methods it uses to control a country of 1.4 billion people, how corruption runs rampant through the Chinese state, and the most surprising discovery in my reading of Richard McGregor’s The Party.