CHINA:Chen Ailian is a sharp-suited entrepreneur and card-carrying Communist cadre who sees no conflict between driving a Rolls Royce and turning up as a leading delegate at the 17th national party congress in Beijing.
In the days of chairman Mao Zedong, capitalists were "counter-revolutionaries" and "poisonous weeds", but China's Communist Party has ceded some ground to people like Ms Chen, whose car component company is one of the country's most successful.
"Don't stereotype a Communist Party member, who can also be modern, fashionable and open-minded," Ms Chen told the China Daily.
"Like workers, farmers, intellectuals, cadres and soldiers, private entrepreneurs are also builders of socialism with Chinese characteristics," said the 49-year-old, who represents the private sector in the booming province of Zhejiang.
The fiery rhetoric rings uncannily similar to the dictums of Mao Zedong's Little Red Book, but her story is a parable of New China.
She borrowed €45,000 and rented a factory, then built up her business until her company, based in her home town of Shaoxing, was supplying components to the likes of Ford, Toyota, and GM.
She is one of the 2,200-plus delegates gathered in the Great Hall of the People for the congress, which yesterday elected a new central committee without vice-president Zeng Qinghong, who will step down, a move which is seen as strengthening president Hu Jintao's grip on power as Mr Zeng is a close ally of former president Jiang Zemin, who runs a rival faction to Mr Hu within the party.
China reveals the identities of its new elite Politburo today, marking the end of a remarkably open party congress in the capital Beijing. For years, no one in the city knew the congress was on until fireworks announced it was over.
The new Politburo, which is expected to be very much on the side of Mr Hu, will run a different brand of Communist Party to the group of 13 ideologues who gathered in a draughty hall in Shanghai for the first congress in 1921. Back then there were just 60 communists in China - now there are 73 million.
Private entrepreneurs were long excluded from the party, but now they are recognised for their contribution to the economy. Last year 1,554 capitalists joined the party, a small number but significant number in terms of their influence.
The rise of the stock market and years of double-digit economic growth have given rise to a new entrepreneurial class and China's 345,000 millionaires, in dollar terms, are more than welcome into the ranks of the party.
People like Ms Chen, who in her old life, before she bought the Roller, drove a truck. Now she is chairperson of Wanfeng Auto Holding Group - the largest manufacturer of aluminium alloy wheels in Asia and one of the top 50 auto parts suppliers in China.
Chinese factories built 8.5 million cars last year, making it the biggest manufacturer and the third-biggest buyer of cars in the world.
She joined the Communist Party in 1995, a year after she started her business and cannily set up a branch of the party in her company in the late 1990s.
Congress spokesman Li Dongsheng said private entrepreneurs "could help expand the popular foundation of the party, facilitate the healthy development of a private sector and elevating the vigour of the party". The Communist Party is keen to boost its representation in private companies as a way of keeping its presence in daily life high and not losing its relevance in the face of rampant private enterprise.
The party also needs to woo private entrepreneurs if it is to address the yawning wealth gap between the new rich of the eastern and southern seaboard and the impoverished, largely rural heartland.
Li said the Communist Party must reach out to all sectors of society to "unify national aspiration".
Party data shows that this new "social strata" of entrepreneurs numbers about 50 million people, controlling billions of euro worth of capital, half the patents in the country and accounting for one-third of all tax paid in China.
Karl Marx must be spinning in his grave. Indeed, you wonder what the Great Helmsman, Chairman Mao himself, would think.