Read Online The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers by Richard McGregor - Free Book Online Page A
Book: The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers by Richard McGregor
Read Free Book Online
Authors: Richard McGregor
Tags: nonfiction, History, Business & Economics, china, Asian Culture, Politics & Government, Communism, Military & Fighting
Ads: Link
stay in power and get rich at the same time, or to stay in power by getting rich–means their views are often heeded anyway.
The Party has not drawn one obvious lesson from the success of the economy–that the public policy sector that has been most open to debate and competition has produced the best outcomes. In the Party’s view, liberal economics have only succeeded in China because they have been married with authoritarian politics. China’s instincts in this respect are like those of much of Asia. The visible hand of the state and the invisible hand of the market, far from being contradictory, are made to complement and reinforce each other. These days, Chinese officials treat questions of any inherent contradiction between a communist political system and a capitalist economy as almost banal. In real life, China is full of symbols of how the Party has merged the two systems to its advantage. At the Shanghai party school, one of the top four in the country, this convergence of interests is part of the curriculum.
The school, opened in late 2005 on a 40-hectare campus in the newly built Pudong district, luxuriates in modern buildings designed by Paris-based architects to resemble a red painting table, consciously echoing the place where ‘the master teaches the student’ in traditional Chinese culture. As ever, the Party has calibrated the way the school presents itself at home, to its Chinese students, and, separately, to the outside world. The official name of the school in Chinese, properly translated into English, is the ‘China Pudong Cadre College’. In English, the communist connotations of the word ‘cadre’ have been excised to render the centre’s name as the ‘China Executive Leadership Academy in Pudong’, making it sound more like an MBA factory than a pillar of the party system. The subtle name change underlines the central purpose of the party school system, which is as much about enforcing and benchmarking loyalty as imparting modern management skills.
On the first day of class in Shanghai, the students, all up-and-coming officials, with a few private entrepreneurs sprinkled into the mix, make a ritual pilgrimage to the small museum commemorating the place where thirteen activists met in secret in 1921 to found the Communist Party in China. On the way, the students pass through a late nineteenth-century city district, smartly refurbished by a Boston architect, and crawling with upscale eateries and expensive apartments with prices to rival global capitals like New York and London. Since the mid-nineties much of old Shanghai has been knocked down and replaced by high-rise developments. In 2001 a Hong Kong property tycoon was allowed to refurbish this small district, called Xintiandi, or ‘New Heaven on Earth’, because he agreed to preserve some of the old low-rise houses, and upgrade the party museum alongside them.
The workers and their families who used to live in the old laneway residences complained bitterly about the meagre compensation they received for being ejected for the development. The uproar over the same kind of issue in areas across the whole city led to the downfall of the powerful Shanghai party secretary, a Politburo member, several years later. But the idea that one of the Party’s sacred sites should sit proudly amidst a yuppie wonderland generated much less controversy. What once might have been seen as a fatal clash of values has been turned into an advertisement for the Party’s fundamental strengths. ‘People can see the progress of the Party,’ Professor Xia Jianming, the Shanghai party school’s director-general, said. ‘This [setting] is a kind of harmony. In our society, people of different levels may have different ways of meeting their requirements.’
But the story does not end there. The flipside of the single-party state are the multiple, and multiplying, realities of twenty-first-century China. The upheaval of the last three decades has
The Party has not drawn one obvious lesson from the success of the economy–that the public policy sector that has been most open to debate and competition has produced the best outcomes. In the Party’s view, liberal economics have only succeeded in China because they have been married with authoritarian politics. China’s instincts in this respect are like those of much of Asia. The visible hand of the state and the invisible hand of the market, far from being contradictory, are made to complement and reinforce each other. These days, Chinese officials treat questions of any inherent contradiction between a communist political system and a capitalist economy as almost banal. In real life, China is full of symbols of how the Party has merged the two systems to its advantage. At the Shanghai party school, one of the top four in the country, this convergence of interests is part of the curriculum.
The school, opened in late 2005 on a 40-hectare campus in the newly built Pudong district, luxuriates in modern buildings designed by Paris-based architects to resemble a red painting table, consciously echoing the place where ‘the master teaches the student’ in traditional Chinese culture. As ever, the Party has calibrated the way the school presents itself at home, to its Chinese students, and, separately, to the outside world. The official name of the school in Chinese, properly translated into English, is the ‘China Pudong Cadre College’. In English, the communist connotations of the word ‘cadre’ have been excised to render the centre’s name as the ‘China Executive Leadership Academy in Pudong’, making it sound more like an MBA factory than a pillar of the party system. The subtle name change underlines the central purpose of the party school system, which is as much about enforcing and benchmarking loyalty as imparting modern management skills.
On the first day of class in Shanghai, the students, all up-and-coming officials, with a few private entrepreneurs sprinkled into the mix, make a ritual pilgrimage to the small museum commemorating the place where thirteen activists met in secret in 1921 to found the Communist Party in China. On the way, the students pass through a late nineteenth-century city district, smartly refurbished by a Boston architect, and crawling with upscale eateries and expensive apartments with prices to rival global capitals like New York and London. Since the mid-nineties much of old Shanghai has been knocked down and replaced by high-rise developments. In 2001 a Hong Kong property tycoon was allowed to refurbish this small district, called Xintiandi, or ‘New Heaven on Earth’, because he agreed to preserve some of the old low-rise houses, and upgrade the party museum alongside them.
The workers and their families who used to live in the old laneway residences complained bitterly about the meagre compensation they received for being ejected for the development. The uproar over the same kind of issue in areas across the whole city led to the downfall of the powerful Shanghai party secretary, a Politburo member, several years later. But the idea that one of the Party’s sacred sites should sit proudly amidst a yuppie wonderland generated much less controversy. What once might have been seen as a fatal clash of values has been turned into an advertisement for the Party’s fundamental strengths. ‘People can see the progress of the Party,’ Professor Xia Jianming, the Shanghai party school’s director-general, said. ‘This [setting] is a kind of harmony. In our society, people of different levels may have different ways of meeting their requirements.’
But the story does not end there. The flipside of the single-party state are the multiple, and multiplying, realities of twenty-first-century China. The upheaval of the last three decades has
Similar Books
