CHINA: China's Communist Party is flourishing, with nearly 71 million paid-up members last year, suggesting the notion of socialism with Chinese characteristics has struck a chord with the cadres. Clifford Coonan reports from Beijing
The Communist Party has ruled China with an iron fist for over 50 years and it has proven more ideologically flexible than Karl Marx would ever have suspected. However, a willingness to adapt is one of the factors keeping it in power in China and it remains a highly visible presence. The party celebrates its 85th birthday on July 1st.
In 2005, the party admitted 2.47 million new members, up 2.4 per cent on the previous year, government statistics show.
Local party organisations are centrally located in every township and city neighbourhood. There are party offices in every university, army barracks and agricultural institution. There are branches in every big firm, including nearly 100,000 private businesses.
Membership of the party is not compulsory, but it helps with advancement in many areas of civic life, and not everyone who applies to become a member can join - only around 14 per cent of applicants are successful.
Stability and harmony are the key phrases in the central leadership's vocabulary these days and maintaining the power of the party is central to ensuring President Hu Jintao's "harmonious society".
This has led to campaigns to weed out corrupt cadres from its ranks to soothe discontent over misrule and prevent anti-government protests. Last year, 115,000 members, or 2 per cent of members, were punished for corruption and other offences.
In recent months, millions of party members have been encouraged to sign up for lectures and study sessions aimed at bolstering party power. Cadres boned up on their Marxism and read closely the thoughts of former leaders Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin.
The traditional membership base of the CCP has been workers, farmers, intellectuals, soldiers and government officials. But the party has recently been wooing entrepreneurs and businessmen to modernise its profile.
Most of the new card-carrying CCP members, over three-quarters of a million, are students, while there are 226,000 workers. There are nearly half a million "farmers, herdsmen and fishermen", 200,000 bureaucrats and 570,000 "executives and technicians of other sorts of civilian organisations", as well as soldiers and police and self-employed people, the report showed.
Nearly a quarter of CCP members are less than 35 years old, 19 per cent are women and 29 per cent have a college education.
Adherents of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement say millions are leaving the party every year, but Beijing denies the reports saying they come from people "with ulterior motives".