Will the CCP’s One-Party Authoritarian Model Remain Viable? A Separate and Integrated Analysis of Organization, History, International Relations, Economic Growth and Distribution, Social Governance, IT and Big Data, Vested Interests, and Youth and Students

[u/Slow-Property5895]

(This article is excerpted from A Century of the CCP: The History, Present, and Future of the Chinese Communist Party.)

Studying history makes it easier to predict the future. What the future of the CCP will look like can be gleaned from the historical traces it has left and its current state. On the basis of what has already happened, and by considering the particular political and social environment of the present era, one may anticipate its various possible paths forward.
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Based on the CCP’s history, characteristics, and nature described above, the CCP is clearly a political organization exceptionally skilled at constructing state power and manipulating populations. Its organization is highly disciplined and rigid (referring specifically to loyalty, dependence, and cohesion), and its top leadership acts with caution, decisiveness, and strong resolve. On the premise of maintaining its ruling position as the bottom line, the CCP demonstrates unusual pragmatism, flexibility, and resilience. It can adapt to changes in the situation, make effective use of favorable circumstances in its environment, continually update its policies, and extend and consolidate its own existence and development.
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For example, the “People’s Communes and People’s Communization Movement” and the Cultural Revolution led to economic collapse and social chaos in China, yet the CCP always held a tight grip on political power. Even when famine and upheaval spread across the country, it successfully killed off the sprouts of any domestic political opposition and cut off any possibility of effective external penetration. Not long after Mao’s death, the CCP leadership decisively abandoned class struggle and dogmatism, moving toward reform and opening-up. After the 1989 June Fourth crackdown, in the face of domestic and international pressure, the CCP insisted on one-party rule in the political sphere while also insisting on deepening economic reform, raising high the banner of the “socialist market economy,” successfully absorbing the shock, creating the “Chinese economic miracle,” and stabilizing the regime, gradually forming the “China Model.” Meanwhile, even as economic liberalization advanced, the party’s control over political power and public opinion remained strict and, in fact, grew stronger. The CCP never gave the opposition any real opportunity to participate in politics.
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Today’s CCP has embedded itself into China’s existence and development by constructing the “China Model,” making itself “inseparable” from China. This so-called “China Model” means that political authoritarianism and economic openness operate simultaneously and in coordination. Through a stability-maintenance apparatus and the “low human-rights advantage” it creates, it encourages, induces, and forces citizens to participate in economic production, and then allocates the fruits of labor according to the relative strength of power. It relies primarily on the violent apparatus to suppress all discontent and resistance, enabling society to operate according to an order set by coercive power.
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This model is the opposite of Western liberal and open societies that value equality, yet it possesses extraordinary vitality. In fact, due to its “low human-rights advantage” and centralized power advantage, it sometimes proves more competitive than Western models. The formation of the “China Model” has given the CCP the confidence not to “take the Western path,” and even to export the “China Model” to developing countries, positioning itself as a rival to the Western world.
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The “China Model” can be traced back to ancient China. During the long history before the Opium War, China was essentially a self-sufficient, self-contained social system, with its own political logic, economic structure, cultural characteristics, and social relations fundamentally different from those of the West. Over two centuries of harsh Manchu rule further damaged and reshaped China, isolating it from global civilization. Despotism and the institutions that supported despotism—including the Qing period—were essential components of China’s traditional system.
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After China was drawn into globalization, all its aspects came under dramatic external impact, yet this did not destroy China’s own social ecosystem. Although the CCP claims to be a revolutionary party and once exhibited a radical tendency to destroy tradition, in reality it unconsciously, and at times deliberately, emulated Chinese tradition. After the Cultural Revolution, the CCP openly embraced tradition and used it as a tool to resist “Westernization.”
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The “China Model” constructed by the CCP is built upon the existing traditional Chinese social system, and what is old often carries great stability and continues to exert ubiquitous and enduring influence in modern society. The CCP’s reliance on tradition has been highly successful. China’s traditional institutions, culture, and the various experiences and habits that have survived to the present are inexhaustible resources for the CCP’s rule, serving as its trump card against modern civilization originating in the West. From Mao to Deng to Xi, the reason they could secure their rule under the banner of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” did not truly rely on “socialism,” but rather on “Chinese characteristics.”
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The prosperity or collapse of the economy and whether the material living conditions of the people are sufficient are crucial to determining whether a regime is legitimate and stable. In the past several decades up to the present, and even into the foreseeable future, the CCP will continue to take reform and opening-up as its foundation, maintain considerable economic freedom, leverage the regulatory role of the state, focus on economic development, and raise living standards.
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Although Xi Jinping is not enthusiastic about reform and opening-up, the line he actually implements (especially his economic line) still follows the basic direction of reform and opening-up. As long as such policies continue, China will not resemble certain “failed states” that collapse when economic crisis erodes public confidence in the regime. From Deng Xiaoping onward, successive CCP leaders have indeed “grabbed hold of the crucial point” by “grasping the economy.” Compared with Mao-era ideological mobilization, which could stir temporary fervor but could not endure, tangible economic benefits bind people’s loyalties much more effectively.
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The distribution of economic gains is indeed extremely unjust, yet the general improvement in living standards compared to the past is also a fact—even if that improvement has resulted from the leaps in productivity brought by the four waves of industrial revolution that swept the globe, rather than being the personal achievement of the CCP as a single party group.
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In ancient and modern times, frequent peasant uprisings and rebellions occurred because living conditions were extremely harsh: hunger and lack of clothing were constant. Facing death anyway, people rose up to gamble for wealth. Today is different. Even for the lowest classes with no status, no education, and no connections, as long as one is willing to do hard labor, eating three simple yet sufficient and palatable meals a day is not a problem.
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Recently, over the past hundred years, the comfort level of human life has improved to an astonishing degree. Ordinary people are now able to enjoy material conditions and services that even ancient emperors, mobilizing the resources of the entire country, would have found difficult to obtain. In addition, technological development and industrial upgrading have greatly reduced the average intensity of labor compared to the past, and significantly increased labor safety. As for the upper-middle strata, they are even more easily able to live in environments of great material abundance and quality. These are the groups with the greatest capacity for social transformation, and they are the beneficiaries of China’s distinctive political-economic model, with no material motivation for revolution. To resist the regime means imprisonment, torture, loss of life, and implicating one’s relatives.
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If we exclude pursuits related to rights and dignity at the non-material level, then from the perspective of pure interest and basic material needs, people today no longer have any necessity to risk their lives in resistance. As for injustice and unfairness, resistance would only lead to greater and heavier injustices afterward. On one side, survival is possible through labor; on the other, there is the iron fist of the stability-maintenance apparatus. The vast majority of people will make the instinctive choice, even if such survival lacks dignity, decency, and freedom.
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Human desires are bottomless, yet humans are also easily satisfied, depending on how the environment guides them and how the system disciplines them. The “nipple entertainment” produced by industrial civilization works on the vast majority of people, and its cost is very low. Most importantly, the CCP regime not only possesses the “carrots” of such “nipple entertainment,” but also the “stick” of a stability-maintenance apparatus supported by violent force. As long as the economy does not collapse or experience severe decline, the CCP regime can continue to maintain itself for a long period. (The tremendous growth of productivity and technology after World War II has weakened and obscured the extent of harm inflicted on the people by the CCP’s tyranny, and has provided enormous assistance for the CCP to claim legitimacy in governance. Not only in China, but the consolidation of the Kim dynasty regime in North Korea is the same. This issue is complex and could be discussed separately in another article, so it will not be elaborated here.)
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The gains and losses of social governance are likewise important factors related to the legitimacy and stability of a regime. “Social governance” refers to the management and services delivered by the regime and its affiliated forces toward the state, citizens, and society. Its effectiveness manifests in many areas: the economy, technology, rule of law, public security, infrastructure, social welfare, education and healthcare, and so on. Social governance capacity is a direct expression of a regime’s governing capacity, reflecting the maturity of its ability to manage society, and relating to public satisfaction with the government.
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Looking across the world, social governance capacity has no linear relationship with the political nature of the regime (whether democratic or authoritarian). High levels of social governance are found not only in democratic countries of Europe and the United States, but also in South Korea, Taiwan (before democratization), and Singapore—authoritarian regimes. In many impoverished developing countries, democratic and authoritarian regimes coexist. Judged purely by efficiency and results, democracy does not significantly add points to social governance, and may even become a constraining factor.
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Evaluating China’s social governance is not easy. On one hand, in terms of economic and technological development, infrastructure construction, education and healthcare services, there are indeed many things worth acknowledging. The degree of organization and modernization of social life is high, and public security and the orderliness of public spaces exceed that of all developing countries and some developed countries.
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On the other hand, its social control has no authorization from public opinion nor any supervision over it, and no independent judiciary to regulate it. It brutally tramples on human rights, does not permit the development of citizen self-organization, and its foremost task for social organizations is to cooperate with regime rule and stability maintenance. Meanwhile, its services are extremely unbalanced and unfair, and corruption is severe. China’s social governance emphasizes “management” rather than “service,” values appearance over substance, and is based on concerns over the rise or fall of the regime rather than the wellbeing of the people. Overall, it displays a social-Darwinist tendency of achieving goals by any means necessary.
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In any case, taking into account a weighted assessment of governance efficiency and hard indicators, the social governance level of China under CCP rule can be considered above average in the world. It is certainly not in the condition of a “failed state” with ruined lands, social disorder, and miserable livelihoods. As a tool for maintaining its rule, social governance naturally contains specific techniques of social control; the art of ruling the people is part of social governance. Modern information technology has become a powerful assistant in social governance and a magical instrument for managing the populace.
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The assistance provided by information technology is the key reason the CCP can act in wanton retrogressive ways without fearing large-scale effective resistance. The revolutionary development of science and technology and the arrival of the information age have profoundly changed the relationship between individuals, between the strong and the weak, and between rulers and the ruled. In the era of information technology, ubiquitous big data and surveillance systems have overturned people’s circumstances and their relative relationships with others. The strong and those in power, through information technology, can record and monitor every action and word of the weak and the governed, and can use weapons and machines closely related to information technology to control, restrain, and suppress them. Information technology enables a very small number of people to easily and effectively manage the vast majority, with extraordinarily efficient capabilities in resource allocation for suppression. The crowd-control weapons of the military and police have become high-tech, and crowd-control command systems are likewise information-based, enabling fast, precise, quiet, and calibrated strikes, leaving resisters with no ability to fight back and no room to maneuver—achieving suppression at minimal cost and maximally weakening or completely erasing the impact of resistance.
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The old era of “raising the standard of revolt by chopping wood for weapons” to “incite the world to rise” is no longer possible. The integration of information-based surveillance systems, communication systems, and transportation systems can strangle such efforts in the cradle, giving no opportunity for resisters to organize. From ancient times to today, the strategies available to the weak in the face of the strong, and to the oppressed in the face of their oppressors—such as fleeing, hiding, networking, sabotage, raids, assassination, and guerrilla warfare—have all lost feasibility under a regime of big-data totalitarianism. The ruled no longer have any significant deterrent or bargaining power against the ruling class as they did before the information age. Even if subjected to the most brutal persecution, there is no risk of large-scale backlash. Though these seem like technical matters, in a certain sense they are decisive for the survival of authoritarianism.
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Thus, “popular support” becomes increasingly unimportant. For the CCP, the evolution of totalitarianism means it no longer needs to worry much about dissatisfaction among the broad masses of ordinary people. The CCP, having mastered the right to use information technology, is like a fortress covered by anti-nuclear material, no longer needing to worry about external threats, focusing instead on preventing internal collapse. What the CCP cares more about is whether the existing vested-interest groups within the system are dissatisfied, and what their demands are.
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What truly enables the CCP regime to sustain itself over the long term is precisely the determined defense of this regime and this party by the CCP’s vested-interest group. From the founding of the Party until now, the CCP has accumulated tens of millions of vested-interest individuals. Including their closely connected relatives, friends, and associates, this vested-interest group numbers 200–300 million people, distributed roughly in a pyramid structure according to the scale of power, status, and wealth. This group, accounting for about one-fifth of China’s population, are the relatively advantaged under CCP rule. They occupy the vast majority of important social resources and privileged social positions, with overwhelming discursive power and influence.
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It is true that this group is composed of members whose interests are not entirely consistent and even show clear conflicts, and internal political struggles and other contradictions are intense. However, they generally support CCP rule (or are themselves part of the ruling class), and they are the foundation for the CCP regime’s survival and long-term continuation. (Of course, this does not mean that there are no vested-interest individuals who oppose the system, but they are a minority. More precisely, vested-interest individuals who oppose CCP totalitarianism are generally silent and compliant with the status quo, having neither carried out nor been able to carry out any substantive resistance.)
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The CCP’s vested-interest class mostly survives and benefits directly or indirectly from the CCP regime and the system it has established. Their personal interests and family interests are aligned with the overall interests of the CCP regime; they are bound to it by identity, background, status, and position, and they coexist and prosper with the current system, while their interests are inconsistent with, and even contrary to, those of the nation, the people, and the broader population. “Vested interests” do not refer only to economic benefits, but also to tangible and intangible advantages in power, status, social relations, and discursive power, especially the advantage of winning in interest competition (or non-interest competition) against other members of society. Although vested-interest individuals are often dissatisfied with those at higher levels in the hierarchy, they are even more unwilling to lose their relative superiority over the vast numbers of people outside the vested-interest circle. Even when they are discontent, they tend to seek personal gains through individual effort or abnormal means, rather than joining the oppressed to overthrow the system and achieve equality for all.
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As for the political faith and ideals that are supposed to guide and constrain the thoughts and actions of CCP members, they have long since vanished in the hearts of the overwhelming majority of Party members today. “Faith” and “ideal” are merely a curtain to cover shame; the pursuit of interests is the real orientation of the CCP and its members. Those ideals once defended by countless martyrs who shed blood and sacrifice—anyone who genuinely adheres to them today is regarded as a fool. Neither discipline nor law can restrain them—what use can ideals and beliefs have? Of course, this does not exclude the possibility that during commemorations, the heirs of the red regime feel their blood boil and their pride swell, while simultaneously thinking quietly about how to indulge in luxury. They have their own logic that they believe to be internally consistent. The more corrupt and degenerate they become, the less willing the CCP will be to abandon propaganda about political faith and ideals—not to encourage self-reform, but to lengthen and widen the inadequate curtain of shame.
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It is worth noting that the large-scale moral collapse among CCP members did not emerge only after Deng Xiaoping took power and implemented a capitalist system; it already existed during Mao Zedong’s era. As early as the Yan’an period—when the CCP had barely secured its dominance—there was already “three levels of clothing and five grades of food” (though the Yan’an period was relatively restrained, mainly in order to win domestic public support and to gain favor from foreign countries, especially the United States). Compared with Deng’s era, when corruption was represented openly by money, in Mao’s era, it was practiced through the distribution of privileges via power itself—seemingly hidden, but in fact even more naked and cruel.
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The distribution of the CCP’s vested-interest class is highly structured, resembling the hierarchical order of China’s traditional feudal society. It both relies on and is constrained by the state’s apparatus of violent force and the system itself, and therefore possesses strong internal stability. Up to the highest levels, the vested-interest class has an unwritten mechanism of upward mobility, providing opportunities for further advancement. Although such opportunities are neither equal nor fair, they are not entirely unattainable, and talent is a very important factor in consideration.
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Of course, there are also channels for ordinary people outside the vested-interest class to enter it and ascend further, such as the national university entrance examinations and the civil service examinations. These absorb elite individuals not yet incorporated into the system, thereby weakening potential social forces of resistance. This is yet another imitation of existing institutional designs from ancient China. Such systems and institutions are extremely important for preventing the decline of the regime and for maintaining the vitality of the regime and the vested-interest class. They are a major reason why China’s autocracy remains perfected and long-lasting. At the same time, the CCP regime strictly forbids attempts to compete for power and profit through actions that challenge the system or threaten the survival of the regime, ruthlessly suppressing such behavior. The vested-interest class also understands very clearly that if they wish to preserve their interests, pass them on to their descendants, and benefit their relatives and associates, they must defend this dictatorial and autocratic regime, and must safeguard this Party whose very essence from head to toe is defined by “interest.”
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Speaking of the vested-interest class, one must mention a special group: students and youth. Since modern times, students and youth, because of their relatively rich knowledge, their pure and unblemished souls, their urgent desire for change, and their courage to sweep away the old order, have consistently been the vanguard of progress and transformation in all countries. From the late Qing to the Republican era, every major reform and movement for national strengthening in China involved the enthusiastic participation of student youth. From the CCP’s embryonic beginnings to its ultimate seizure of power, student youth played a decisive role. From the May Fourth Movement, the May Thirtieth Movement, the December Ninth Movement, to the “anti-hunger, anti-persecution, anti-civil war” movements, student movements were always a crucial component of the CCP’s revolutionary efforts, playing an important role in striking against the warlords and the Kuomintang regime.
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However, once the CCP seized power, it exercised strict prevention and suppression over student movements. It not only conducted a large-scale fragmentation and weakening of the humanities and social sciences in higher education, but also established a university management system based on Party branches and ideological-political education, whose degree of control far exceeded the KMT’s infiltration of campuses through military police or secret agencies. Horizontally speaking, it was also far more severe than most authoritarian regimes’ control over universities, comparable only to the most rigid Stalinist-style regimes such as North Korea. Only two periods were exceptions. The first was during the early Cultural Revolution, when students were mobilized to “make revolution” due to Mao’s political needs, and the bureaucratic system temporarily lost its ability to control campuses. Yet at that time, opposition to the CCP remained the ultimate political taboo—revolutionary mobilization always presupposed loyalty to the CCP and Mao personally. The second exception was the 1980s, the first and almost the only decade of genuine openness under CCP rule. During that period, student youth once again became the vanguard of social transformation, playing a leading role in the 1989 movement. Those roughly ten years were also the period when Chinese universities most resembled universities, and students most resembled true students.
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After June Fourth, the CCP restored its harsh control system over universities. Student youth and university faculty were placed under strict monitoring and discipline, political activity on campuses disappeared, and academic freedom was strangled. Compared to the Mao era, university control after June Fourth became more professionalized and resilient. There were no longer violent and storm-like political movements and mass criticism; instead, beneath a surface of quietness and calm existed coercion and sedation. Not only did organized action become impossible, even critical speech or exposure could easily lead to being summoned for interrogation, creating a chilling effect that forced faculty and students into self-censorship and avoidance of critical politics. Universities carried out comprehensive indoctrination, instilling values of loyalty to the Party and the government, replacing the ideals of liberty and democracy with the banner of “patriotism.”
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What was even more effective was that the CCP regime encouraged faculty and students to embrace utilitarianism, to abandon concern for the nation and society, and instead “make a fortune in silence” by pursuing personal gain—even implying that they could do so by any means necessary. This guiding atmosphere within universities was consistent with the social ethos the CCP promoted in the 1990s and thereafter: inducement through profit, moral corrosion, spiritual anesthesia, turning students into supporters and fellow travelers of the CCP.
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Under Xi Jinping, the high-pressure control over universities has intensified. Universities have become a key component of the stability-maintenance apparatus, placing heavy chains around the group of young students who possess the greatest potential for transformation. While blocking the pathway of social movements and revolution, the CCP has at the same time bestowed generous treatment upon student youth, especially those from key institutions, and absorbed many excellent individuals among them into the system, ensuring that they become stable vested-interest beneficiaries under this regime. Thus, the “unstable factor” that most frustrates autocrats and conservatives around the world has been conquered by the CCP through a combination of coercion and inducement.
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Everyone has an instinct to seek benefit and avoid harm; in the face of profit and punishment, how important is morality? The vast majority of those with the real capacity to transform China within the vested-interest class have, in reality, chosen to accept the CCP’s authoritarian rule, maintaining loyalty to the system. The CCP, in both policy orientation and practice, increasingly leans toward safeguarding the “power” and “interests” of the vested-interest class, holding firmly onto its core base to maintain political stability. This makes it equally unrealistic to expect that the “fortress will be breached from within.”
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Therefore, even if the CCP has numerous problems, some of which are extremely severe, with acute social contradictions, and even if the regressive policies of Xi Jinping and other hardliners are excessive, as long as the above conditions remain unchanged, the CCP regime will continue to possess vigorous vitality. Not to mention the fall of the CCP—even the outbreak of intense and open social turmoil is impossible.

(This article was written by Wang Qingmin(王庆民), a Chinese writer based in Europe and a researcher in international politics. The original was written in Chinese in 2021.)

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(This article is excerpted from A Century of the CCP: The History, Present, and Future of the Chinese Communist Party.)

Studying history makes it easier to predict the future. What the future of the CCP will look like can be gleaned from the historical traces it has left and its current state. On the basis of what has already happened, and by considering the particular political and social environment of the present era, one may anticipate its various possible paths forward.
ㅤ
Based on the CCP’s history, characteristics, and nature described above, the CCP is clearly a political organization exceptionally skilled at constructing state power and manipulating populations. Its organization is highly disciplined and rigid (referring specifically to loyalty, dependence, and cohesion), and its top leadership acts with caution, decisiveness, and strong resolve. On the premise of maintaining its ruling position as the bottom line, the CCP demonstrates unusual pragmatism, flexibility, and resilience. It can adapt to changes in the situation, make effective use of favorable circumstances in its environment, continually update its policies, and extend and consolidate its own existence and development.
ㅤ
For example, the “People’s Communes and People’s Communization Movement” and the Cultural Revolution led to economic collapse and social chaos in China, yet the CCP always held a tight grip on political power. Even when famine and upheaval spread across the country, it successfully killed off the sprouts of any domestic political opposition and cut off any possibility of effective external penetration. Not long after Mao’s death, the CCP leadership decisively abandoned class struggle and dogmatism, moving toward reform and opening-up. After the 1989 June Fourth crackdown, in the face of domestic and international pressure, the CCP insisted on one-party rule in the political sphere while also insisting on deepening economic reform, raising high the banner of the “socialist market economy,” successfully absorbing the shock, creating the “Chinese economic miracle,” and stabilizing the regime, gradually forming the “China Model.” Meanwhile, even as economic liberalization advanced, the party’s control over political power and public opinion remained strict and, in fact, grew stronger. The CCP never gave the opposition any real opportunity to participate in politics.
ㅤ
Today’s CCP has embedded itself into China’s existence and development by constructing the “China Model,” making itself “inseparable” from China. This so-called “China Model” means that political authoritarianism and economic openness operate simultaneously and in coordination. Through a stability-maintenance apparatus and the “low human-rights advantage” it creates, it encourages, induces, and forces citizens to participate in economic production, and then allocates the fruits of labor according to the relative strength of power. It relies primarily on the violent apparatus to suppress all discontent and resistance, enabling society to operate according to an order set by coercive power.
ㅤ
This model is the opposite of Western liberal and open societies that value equality, yet it possesses extraordinary vitality. In fact, due to its “low human-rights advantage” and centralized power advantage, it sometimes proves more competitive than Western models. The formation of the “China Model” has given the CCP the confidence not to “take the Western path,” and even to export the “China Model” to developing countries, positioning itself as a rival to the Western world.
ㅤ
The “China Model” can be traced back to ancient China. During the long history before the Opium War, China was essentially a self-sufficient, self-contained social system, with its own political logic, economic structure, cultural characteristics, and social relations fundamentally different from those of the West. Over two centuries of harsh Manchu rule further damaged and reshaped China, isolating it from global civilization. Despotism and the institutions that supported despotism—including the Qing period—were essential components of China’s traditional system.
ㅤ
After China was drawn into globalization, all its aspects came under dramatic external impact, yet this did not destroy China’s own social ecosystem. Although the CCP claims to be a revolutionary party and once exhibited a radical tendency to destroy tradition, in reality it unconsciously, and at times deliberately, emulated Chinese tradition. After the Cultural Revolution, the CCP openly embraced tradition and used it as a tool to resist “Westernization.”
ㅤ
The “China Model” constructed by the CCP is built upon the existing traditional Chinese social system, and what is old often carries great stability and continues to exert ubiquitous and enduring influence in modern society. The CCP’s reliance on tradition has been highly successful. China’s traditional institutions, culture, and the various experiences and habits that have survived to the present are inexhaustible resources for the CCP’s rule, serving as its trump card against modern civilization originating in the West. From Mao to Deng to Xi, the reason they could secure their rule under the banner of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” did not truly rely on “socialism,” but rather on “Chinese characteristics.”
ㅤ
The prosperity or collapse of the economy and whether the material living conditions of the people are sufficient are crucial to determining whether a regime is legitimate and stable. In the past several decades up to the present, and even into the foreseeable future, the CCP will continue to take reform and opening-up as its foundation, maintain considerable economic freedom, leverage the regulatory role of the state, focus on economic development, and raise living standards.
ㅤ
Although Xi Jinping is not enthusiastic about reform and opening-up, the line he actually implements (especially his economic line) still follows the basic direction of reform and opening-up. As long as such policies continue, China will not resemble certain “failed states” that collapse when economic crisis erodes public confidence in the regime. From Deng Xiaoping onward, successive CCP leaders have indeed “grabbed hold of the crucial point” by “grasping the economy.” Compared with Mao-era ideological mobilization, which could stir temporary fervor but could not endure, tangible economic benefits bind people’s loyalties much more effectively.
ㅤ
The distribution of economic gains is indeed extremely unjust, yet the general improvement in living standards compared to the past is also a fact—even if that improvement has resulted from the leaps in productivity brought by the four waves of industrial revolution that swept the globe, rather than being the personal achievement of the CCP as a single party group.
ㅤ
In ancient and modern times, frequent peasant uprisings and rebellions occurred because living conditions were extremely harsh: hunger and lack of clothing were constant. Facing death anyway, people rose up to gamble for wealth. Today is different. Even for the lowest classes with no status, no education, and no connections, as long as one is willing to do hard labor, eating three simple yet sufficient and palatable meals a day is not a problem.
ㅤ
Recently, over the past hundred years, the comfort level of human life has improved to an astonishing degree. Ordinary people are now able to enjoy material conditions and services that even ancient emperors, mobilizing the resources of the entire country, would have found difficult to obtain. In addition, technological development and industrial upgrading have greatly reduced the average intensity of labor compared to the past, and significantly increased labor safety. As for the upper-middle strata, they are even more easily able to live in environments of great material abundance and quality. These are the groups with the greatest capacity for social transformation, and they are the beneficiaries of China’s distinctive political-economic model, with no material motivation for revolution. To resist the regime means imprisonment, torture, loss of life, and implicating one’s relatives.
ㅤ
If we exclude pursuits related to rights and dignity at the non-material level, then from the perspective of pure interest and basic material needs, people today no longer have any necessity to risk their lives in resistance. As for injustice and unfairness, resistance would only lead to greater and heavier injustices afterward. On one side, survival is possible through labor; on the other, there is the iron fist of the stability-maintenance apparatus. The vast majority of people will make the instinctive choice, even if such survival lacks dignity, decency, and freedom.
ㅤ
Human desires are bottomless, yet humans are also easily satisfied, depending on how the environment guides them and how the system disciplines them. The “nipple entertainment” produced by industrial civilization works on the vast majority of people, and its cost is very low. Most importantly, the CCP regime not only possesses the “carrots” of such “nipple entertainment,” but also the “stick” of a stability-maintenance apparatus supported by violent force. As long as the economy does not collapse or experience severe decline, the CCP regime can continue to maintain itself for a long period. (The tremendous growth of productivity and technology after World War II has weakened and obscured the extent of harm inflicted on the people by the CCP’s tyranny, and has provided enormous assista

[u/traviiiiiii]

Great article. I’d like to push back on two points though.

1. This article talks as if the CCP magically has total social control, but that is just not possible in any country with such degree of economic freedom. If this were the case, the “Blank Paper Revolution” where tens of thousands of citizens marched on streets following the Urumqi fire and eventually forced Xi to remove the super strict Covid policy wouldn’t have happened.
2. This article assumes the economic success of China is a natural result of open&reform and the nature of Chinese population (low human rights etc.) and hence will persist as long as the system lives. In fact, the Chinese economic miracle relied on several external factors that were just there at the right time (most notably the collapse of USSR and the radical neoliberalism reform in the west). The Chinese economy now is facing many structural challenges (the peril of land economy, the population decline, weak consumption, trade war, etc.) and is indeed performing short of expectation, both of economists five years ago and of its own people. Unlike developed countries with democracy, the very legitimacy of the Chinese regime is dependent on the fast growth of the economy. How China will transform itself out of the old paradigm is a great question that everyone wants to know

(P.S. just noticed that this article was written in 2021, predating my observations )

[u/Slow-Property5895 → u/traviiiiiii]

The CCP’s capacity for control is also a complex issue. Its control is indeed pervasive, but it is primarily focused on preventing political resistance. It is relatively more relaxed when it comes to the economy, and there is also some room for specific rights-related demands. The White Paper Movement was actually aimed mainly at ending the COVID lockdowns, rather than overthrowing the CCP. Although some protesters raised political slogans, the movement was ultimately suppressed.
China’s economic transformation does indeed face bottlenecks, but its economic performance is unlikely to be either particularly good or particularly bad. Under such strong state control, economic problems do not easily translate into political resistance, although that possibility certainly exists.

[u/Slow-Property5895]

Link to the full article:

A Century of the Chinese Communist Party: The History, Present, and Future of the CCP

[u/Snoutysensations]

TL, DR, but liberal democracies aren't doing exactly well globally either. If the CCP manages to deliver general economic benefits to the Chinese population while maintaining healthy trade with the rest of the world and managing succession issues when Xi and whoever comes next leave office, I see no reason why it won't continue to run China.  That said, despite the name, there isn't much I'd consider communist about the CCP. 

[u/Candid-String-6530]

Fo thousands of years China only functions when the centre is strong. Strife when the centre is weak. Millions die when there's strife.

[u/Slow-Property5895 → u/Candid-String-6530]

When tens of millions of people starved to death or were killed under the CCP’s centralized rule over a unified China.

[u/lilongyear]

写的啥狗屎玩意，逗你爹笑呢

[u/Slow-Property5895 → u/lilongyear]

Get out 滚你的蛋