BOOK OF THE DAY:The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers By Richard McGregor Allen Lane, pp302, £25
IN THE Party, Richard McGregor's gripping exploration of the machinations that drive the Chinese Communist Party, the "red machine", is both a real piece of equipment and a running theme throughout this account of the most powerful political organisation on earth.
The “red machine” is a red phone, with a four-digit number, and sits on the desk of the top officials in all of China’s main state-owned companies, which effectively means all of the companies in China.
“When the ‘red machine’ rings, you had better make sure you answer it,” McGregor quotes a senior state bank executive saying.
A former Beijing bureau chief of the Financial Times, McGregor views the party chiefly through a business prism, and most of the players are entrepreneurs or senior business figures. There are plenty of real-life figures here, crucial when dealing with such a huge monolith.
The presence of real personalities allows key insights into the party’s network of power. This is a story that we all need to learn in the West, as China becomes an ever-larger presence in our lives.
No one really knows what goes on inside Zhongnanhai, the central enclave of the Chinese Communist Party, but this book, using a light touch, explains how those mysterious decisions are filtered down from the nine-man standing committee to the politburo, to the central committee and on downwards to the 73-million-strong rank and file. All of the key decisions in the world’s most populous nation, and its third-largest and fastest growing economy, are made by this small and highly secretive group.
The book traces the route of the Communist Party from the era of Mao Zedong, who ruled out capitalism as a way forward for China, and persecuted “capitalist roaders” during the Cultural Revolution, to the reforms of Deng Xiaoping and then the decision of Deng’s successor Jiang Zemin to allow entrepreneurs into the party.
The awesome power held by the party is what fascinates McGregor. One evening in 2004, the central organisation department reshuffled the top executives at the country’s top telecoms groups – China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom. All of these are listed companies and the party happily moved the chief executives around without pausing for breath.
He wittily describes how cadres can deliver speeches praising the market and condemning capitalism in the same breath. “The change of political attire is akin to a Wall Street banker disappearing Clark Kent-like into a phone box, and emerging swiftly a few minutes later dressed as Karl Marx.”
Also here is the fascinating tale of Xu Qinxian, the People’s Liberation Army general, who refused to allow the 38th army to fire on democracy demonstrators in Beijing in June 1989.
He brings to life the characters behind the icons of Chinese power and wealth, the figures that built the Shanghai skyline and rebuilt Beijing for the Olympics. More importantly, he gives us a feel for the dynamics behind China’s rise.
In isolating the ideas behind the party’s particular brand of pragmatism, the book also makes a crucial point, and one easily missed in the West. There is a belief that China in some way wants to become like the West, and that if we engage with China that eventually the party will embrace some form of liberal democracy à la the White House or Dáil Éireann. Not so.
“The Chinese Communist Party and its leaders have never wanted to be the west when they grow up. For the foreseeable future, it looks as though their wish, to bestride the world as a colossus on their own implacable terms, will come true.”
Clifford Coonan is China correspondent of
The Irish Times
