Crime exists in every human society, but it works differently in each one. Violent crimes also exist everywhere, and are largely the same until we get to serial murderers. Serial murderers need to be smart enough to avoid capture over time; otherwise they would not become successful serial murderers. For the most part though, while they are interesting, they are also rare.
All Chinese societies share an important rule: family and social relationships are important. This means that births, marriages and deaths are important, as well as the traditional Chinese holidays of New Year’s, Mid-Autumn Festival, etc. Food and meals are also important social rituals because relationships are made and sealed over banquets, and they afford the opportunity to observe new acquaintances in how they handle relationships. New people are closely observed; if they are foreigners it is likely that they don’t even know that they are being closely observed and judged. Other important relationships are formed at school, because school status and grades are such important determinants for future work and social status. Most Westerners are not aware of it, but Chinese society is brutally competitive, starting with school for Chinese children. A small Chinese child may carry the hopes and aspirations for her parents and grandparents, and the culture teaches them that they must do their very best not to let them down. This intense pressure may lead to all kinds of mental and psychological issues. For many Chinese families, an important reason for emigrating to the West is to escape this highly competitive educational and social system. Many Chinese parents continue to think that emigration to the West means that their child will be successful in western society, without having to go through the Chinese educational and social meat-grinder.
Most Western observers believe that China’s ruling party, the Chinese Communist Party, is an authoritarian political party which deprives Chinese of basic human rights. The truth is not so simple. In fact, a higher percentage of Chinese trust the Chinese government, than Americans trust the US government. (These surveys were not done by the Chinese government, but by Pew Research, a widely-trusted international market research firm.)
How did the Party win broad trust? The Party has 90M members from a Chinese population of approximately 1.4B. This means that about 1 out of every 15 PRC Chinese citizens are members. These members are also likely to have family dependents, which may mean that 300M Chinese have an interest in supporting the Party and its policies, and that it stays in power.
The Party draws its membership mostly from the elite in each sector, and are likely to have good educational backgrounds, special skills, or special connections which at one point or another, will be helpful to the nation of China as it develops. Where an individual is identified as being truly exceptional at an early age, they will be invited to apply. Most people apply to join the Party through their own local Party secretary (at their school or place of work). Usually they are placed on observation while the Party conducts a background check to see if they are of good character. It is not unusual for someone to be rejected on their first application; the current Party General Secretary Xi Jinping, had his application rejected nine times before he was finally accepted.
As stated earlier, social connections are very important in Chinese society. So how did the Party inject itself into Chinese social relationships on the social level? All schools and organizations have their own Party branch secretary; this means that their local Party contact will be with the Party branch secretary. Most of the time, this does not mean anything significant: the branch secretary convenes monthly meetings to discuss the latest policy from the Central Committee, and the group will discuss how it should be implemented on their local level. She will also collect monthly dues; those who fail to pay their monthly dues after repeated warnings will be dropped from Party membership.
The attraction of Party membership for ambitious Chinese is that Party members have important duties, and also access to tremendous resources. When COVID-19 broke out in Wuhan in January 2020, and hospitals in Wuhan put out an emergency request for nurses and infectious disease specialists, Party branch secretaries all over China sprung into action within 24 hours, scouring their own membership rolls for those specialists. Within 48 hours, every one of those chosen was on their way to Wuhan. When a memorial service was held for COVID-19 victims in Beijing, there was a column where these individuals were marked as either “citizens” or “party members”. A few outstanding individuals were given the title of “Martyr”.
Even Li Wenliang 李文良, the Wuhan ophthalmologist who was one of the first to sound the alarm about COVID-19 in December 2019, and eventually died from it, was a Party member. (Li was punished by local Wuhan officials for sounding the alarm while they were trying to keep the issue under wraps, hoping that COVID-19 would go away. It didn’t, and the Central government stepped in, firing local Wuhan officials and replacing them with its own appointees. Li Wenliang was posthumously rehabilitated by the Central government, but online public praise for him and public commemorative events for him are not allowed.)
This is the Chinese Communist Party’s way of reminding ordinary Chinese that the Chinese Communist Party stands on the frontlines confronting any crisis, solidifying its claim as the vanguard party for all Chinese, leading China to a brighter future. (Please remember that this only works for Chinese who were born and have grown up in the PRC; Chinese who were born and grew up in Hong Kong, Taiwan, or are ethnic Chinese who have grown up outside the PRC are not subject to this. This is an important distinction.)
There is a dark side to this system. Because the Party has such command and control over resources, money and people, and is not subject to outside oversight and controls, the system can be exploited for personal gain. One way to do this is to package a project as supporting a major Party policy, and then siphoning off the money and resources for one’s own family. When this happens, it is called “corruption”, both in China and in the West.
The word “corruption” is too dismissive and too general, and uses too broad a brush. In China, corruption is NOT about the Party being corrupt on a systemic level, but about individuals using the Party and its resources for personal gain. Another reason for corruption is China’s gift culture, which we will discuss later.
When Deng Xiaoping started to promote his policy of “reform and opening up” 改革开放 in 1978, many Party critics said that these policies would lead to corruption. At the time, China was poor, which meant that there were few opportunities for financial gain. Deng’s rebuke was that “When you open the door, a few flies might come in.” More than 30 years later, when Xi Jinping became Party General Secretary in 2013, he said that “corruption was the greatest single threat to the continued rule of the Chinese Communist Party.”
In next week’s article, we will take a look at Operation Fox Hunt, the Party’s global hunt to bring some of those corrupt flies to justice in China.
I was very disappointed with this article. It simply repeats the same assumptions without research that are endlessly copied across western media. There were also a few factual errors also taken without question from western media such as that Li Wenliang 李文良 was punished. He wasn’t punished nor did he sound the alarm on Covid. Rather he spread a rumour that there was Sars, a far more deadly disease.
It’s indicative that while Li Wenliang is mentioned frequently in western media, Dr. Zhang Jixian isn’t. She was the one who immediately recognised the disease as something new, isolated cases, informed the authorities and much more to help her patients. It was her notifications to hospitals in the area, to be on the lookout for strange pneumonia cases, that Dr Li picked up.
A far more interesting article on the Communist Party was made by Shou’en Li, an editor and journalist in Beijing who tracked the path a party member has to take to rise to the top in, Quora “”How does the Communist party of China select and groom a person to be the next paramount leader?”
Yes, the communist party is always on the lookout for corruption, particularly amongst its own members. Like ending poverty, Xi Jinping is working to end corruption not just mouthing the words..
This is really interesting, thank you