(This article is excerpted from A Century of the CCP: The History, Present, and Future of the Chinese Communist Party.)
Because historical conditions differed and the personal values and personalities of leaders varied, the CCP displayed very different political styles in different periods, reflected in concrete policies and the ideology it promoted. At the same time, however, from its founding to its rule to the present day, the CCP has also maintained certain consistent traits, and different leaders shared common views and positions on several major issues.
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(1) The CCP Before Mao’s Consolidation of Power: From Democratic Nonviolence to Arbitrary Brutality
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Under the first CCP leader, Chen Duxiu, the Party was still an idealistic and nonviolent organization. At that time, the CCP had not yet transformed into a Leninist party, and the internal atmosphere remained highly democratic.
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By the time of the Northern Expedition, the CCP began to transform into a clearly instrumental party oriented toward seizing power, with obvious utilitarian tendencies. During this period, the CCP expanded rapidly, and its membership became highly mixed. Although by this time it had begun to adopt the strict discipline characteristic of a Leninist party, internal authoritarian dominance had not yet formed. The CCP’s actions in both urban and rural areas during the Northern Expedition already revealed its violent, ruthless, and goal-at-any-cost characteristics.
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After the April 12th Coup, the CCP suffered a devastating blow, and the entire Party became sensitive and neurotic. Under hostile internal and external conditions, the CCP grew increasingly cruel, and this cruelty began to be widely directed inward. The brutal “purge” campaigns in the Soviet base areas (such as the “suppression of the AB Group” and the resulting Futian Incident) were the most typical manifestations. At this stage, the CCP had already become indistinguishable from the Soviet Communist Party: there was no internal democracy, no rule of law, and no mechanism for timely correction; disputes between individuals had no peaceful channels of resolution; political struggle intensified without limit. In the name of “purifying” the Party and eliminating rivals for private purposes, reactionary purges escalated in a vicious cycle, and physical elimination became a common method of internal struggle.
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(2) The Mao Era: The Single Individual Who Shaped, Led, and Dominated the Entire CCP
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After 1936, Mao Zedong gradually seized the main power of the CCP, and he maintained it for forty years. Mao was a political figure with a sharp personality, strong desire for power, and extraordinary skill in political struggle. Mao deeply influenced and even reshaped the CCP, and his influence endures to this day. At the height of Mao’s power, Mao himself became the embodiment of the CCP; the Party existed entirely as an instrument through which Mao realized his personal will.
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During the Mao era, the CCP achieved unity of ideology and will, unity of discipline, and unity of action. Of course, this unity refers to the macro and overall level; it does not mean that CCP members in every time and place always acted in perfect coordination without any disagreement. Before Mao, the CCP consisted merely of people united by common ideals working toward a shared goal, but it lacked a real leadership core. Mao’s emergence gave the CCP a “spine” and a concrete object of loyalty. At the same time, a personality cult appeared and solidified. Mao was deified, his words became sacred doctrine, every gesture of his was endowed with a “great, glorious, and correct” meaning, critical voices gradually disappeared, and Mao became the ruler of both the CCP and China.
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After Mao came to power, the CCP not only established a leadership core, but also clarified its concrete goals and the path it intended to take; the Party’s future development became clear. Mao was both a brilliant theorist and a determined practitioner. The thick volumes of “Selected Works of Mao Zedong” are filled with Mao’s imaginative insights, inspiring awe. The CCP’s ability to prevail as the weaker side and defeat Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist bloc was due in no small part to Mao’s correct strategic decisions in politics, military affairs, and ideological work.
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Overall, the CCP during the Mao era was violent and revolutionary in tone, and political shifts were intense and broad in scope. Whether in the military conflicts during the War of Resistance and the Civil War, or in the political campaigns from the Rectification Movement in Yan’an to the Anti-Rightist Movement and the Cultural Revolution, bloodshed and deaths occurred everywhere. This differs markedly from the situation under later CCP leaders.
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The CCP under Mao was a mixture of idealism and pragmatism. On the one hand, it continued to set the realization of communism as its ultimate goal. Before 1949 it promised to establish a new-democratic regime, and in the liberated areas it promoted democratic experiments such as the “three-thirds system.” After founding the state, it implemented public ownership and collectivization, and eventually launched the Cultural Revolution, placing political ideals at the center of everything.
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On the other hand, after Mao came to power, the CCP essentially abandoned adherence to the core doctrines of Marxism-Leninism, replacing them with highly Sinicized ideology and policies—for example, relying on peasants rather than workers to win the revolution; using traditional Chinese feudal concepts of loyalty to the ruler and techniques of mass control to govern society; rejecting Westernization and modern humanistic and individualist thought; insisting on national independence above cooperation within the international communist movement. Mao’s Sinicization of Marxism-Leninism enabled the CCP to take root more effectively in China. During the War of Resistance and the second phase of the Civil War, the CCP actively extended olive branches to various social groups, including compromising with landlords and capitalists to build a united front. After advancing into Northeast China, the CCP pardoned, incorporated, and retained large numbers of former Japanese troops and former Manchukuo personnel (including some war criminals), as well as technical professionals in the economic, political, transportation, and cultural-education systems of Manchukuo. These were pragmatic actions undertaken for the CCP’s survival and development. After the founding of the People’s Republic, pragmatic actions in domestic and foreign policy were even more numerous—for example, choosing reconciliation with the ideological opponent, the United States, to counterbalance the Soviet Union; relinquishing war reparations from Japan to achieve normalization of Sino-Japanese relations; convening the 7,000 Cadres Conference to review the errors of excessive radicalism; harshly suppressing intellectuals while swiftly pardoning Nationalist military generals; and after each political climax reinstating some previously purged cadres and technical personnel.
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These features of the Mao-era CCP were shaped both by historical circumstances and by Mao’s personal decisions. In any case, Mao’s subjective actions had a profound impact on the CCP. More than any other CCP leader, Mao proactively and consciously shaped the CCP; other leaders mainly responded to the circumstances they faced, while Mao led the CCP in creating and reshaping those circumstances.
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Because Mao held power for such a long time, the characteristics of the CCP in the Mao era changed significantly over time—for example, the differences between the pre-1949 and post-1949 periods. But their commonalities outweighed their differences.
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(3) The Hua Guofeng Period: The Obsolescence and Weakness of the “Two Whatevers” and the Policy of “Grasping the Key Link to Govern the Country”
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The period when Hua Guofeng held office is universally recognized as a transitional phase. The “Two Whatevers” (“We will uphold whatever policies Chairman Mao made, and we will follow whatever instructions Chairman Mao gave”) and the slogan “grasp the key link to govern the country” were the keywords of his tenure. The reason we say he “held office” rather than “held power” is that he did not possess full real authority at the time. He occupied the top position only by relying on the support of Mao’s loyalists such as Wang Dongxing, as well as veteran CCP elders such as Ye Jianying and Li Xiannian.
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During the Hua Guofeng period, the CCP wavered between conservatism and reform. At that time, the people longed for change: the Chinese public was widely dissatisfied with the severe destruction caused by the Cultural Revolution—such as economic collapse and a near state of anarchy—and hoped to bring the country back onto a normal track. But since Mao had just died and his residual prestige still loomed large, the far-left faction still held important positions and opposed any major alteration of the policies of the Mao era. Lacking prestige and ability, Hua Guofeng could not make any decisive moves and could only let circumstances evolve according to the maneuvers of other powerful political figures.
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With Deng Xiaoping’s return and the rise of the reformist camp, the transitional period came to an end. Hua Guofeng brought his short-lived career as the “wise leader” to a close, quietly departed from the center of power, and eventually withdrew from politics altogether.
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(4) The Deng Xiaoping Era: The Political Spring Guided by the Liberal Wing of Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, the Aborted Democratization, and Jiang Zemin’s Model of “Getting Rich Quietly”
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From 1978 to the mid-1990s, the true highest authority in China was Deng Xiaoping. Hu Yaobang, Zhao Ziyang, Li Peng, and Jiang Zemin were all merely executors of Deng’s line at different stages. Of course, each of them possessed a degree of independence and initiative, but in the final analysis they all operated under Deng Xiaoping’s shadow.
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During the Deng Xiaoping era, the CCP almost completely abandoned idealism and fully embraced pragmatism. Deng’s doctrine of “it doesn’t matter whether the cat is black or white” and his principle of “no arguing” both emphasized practice, development, and the accumulation of strength. Domestically, the Party ceased to take class struggle as its guiding line; externally, it ceased exporting revolution. Economic construction became the central task, and the strategy was to “hide capabilities and bide time.” The liberalization of private and individual economic activity, the restructuring of state-owned enterprises, the spread of the household-contract responsibility system in agriculture and the collapse of collective economies, and the introduction of foreign capital and technology all marked the return of capitalism. After decades of destructive experimentation, China “returned to the pre-liberation” economic model: the economic system became capitalist, with a large proportion of bureaucratic-capitalist elements. Meanwhile, “upholding the Four Cardinal Principles” was not about defending political ideals, but about safeguarding the regime and providing protection for economic development.
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During the period when Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang held office, the CCP showed clear tendencies toward democratization and rule of law. At that time, the pace of reform in China was at one point not behind the countries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet bloc. Political liberalization brought openness of public opinion and social freedoms, and China experienced the first relatively long “political spring” under CCP rule. If democratic transformation had proceeded smoothly, the CCP might have transformed into a social-democratic party, changing from an authoritarian party into a democratic one, fundamentally altering its nature.
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But the Tiananmen Incident of 1989 ended this trend, and China’s process of democratization was aborted. Yet the suppression of democratization was, to a certain extent, predictable. For most CCP leaders—including Deng Xiaoping—political pluralism was rejected internally, and they never intended for China to become a “Western-style democracy.” They embraced sweeping economic reform, while remaining extremely cautious about political reform; their bottom line was that the CCP’s one-party domination could not be shaken. They did not want China to remain trapped in the poverty and turmoil of the Mao era, but even less did they want China to “go astray.” Although Hu and Zhao nominally occupied the highest leadership positions, the real power—especially control of the military—remained in the hands of Deng Xiaoping and the veteran elders of the Central Advisory Commission. These liberal leaders with shallow political roots could not possibly defeat the shrewd and battle-hardened CCP elders who had survived war and successive rounds of political struggle.
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The development model under Jiang Zemin was the one most aligned with Deng Xiaoping’s innermost preferences. Its hallmark was that, under the premise of the CCP’s monopoly of political power, a certain degree of reform and opening-up would continue. Unnecessary political interference would be excluded; the population would be given basic stability and limited freedoms; economic development would be stimulated; national strength and people’s living standards would rise; and differential distribution would guarantee the special interests of the privileged class and vested interests. In turn, the privileged class would actively defend the CCP regime in order to protect these vested interests. Ordinary people who gained a share from economic growth would also recognize and accept the regime’s rule. In this way, the CCP regime could be stabilized, and the country could enjoy long-term stability. At this stage, the legitimacy of the CCP no longer came from ideology, but from the achievements and dividends of economic development. The CCP completely transformed into a super-interest community, without any remaining moral or ideological legitimacy.
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To compensate for the loss of ideals caused by abandoning the pursuit of communism and the revolutionary fighting spirit—in other words, to cover the regime’s shame and meet the need for internal ideological cohesion—the CCP in the Deng era and afterwards chose to raise the banner of “patriotism,” binding the CCP together with China and the Chinese nation and even forcefully equating them. This was used to resist the universal values and liberal democratic trends coming from the West. In reality, however, the CCP has been the political group that has harmed and betrayed the interests of China and the Chinese nation the most. The CCP did, to a certain extent, succeed in equating “anti-CCP” with “anti-China,” using narrow notions of imperial centrality and ethnic nationalism to bind the people and confront the West. But fundamentally, the CCP won support through pragmatic economic development, and “patriotism” and “national rejuvenation” were mostly propaganda, unable to arouse the kind of frenzied political enthusiasm that class struggle did in the Mao era.
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Through the 1992 Southern Tour and the 14th Party Congress, Deng Xiaoping firmly established the “road of socialism with Chinese characteristics,” which he personally designed. After Deng’s death in 1997, his line continued to be implemented for a long time. Deng did not need to worry, as Mao did before his death, about being overturned or having his policies terminated, because reform and opening-up conformed to the trend of the times. From top to bottom, most people did not want to return to the years of extreme material scarcity and relentless political struggle.
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(5) The Hu Jintao–Wen Jiabao Period: Deng Xiaoping’s Line Without Deng Xiaoping; Walking Dully Between Stability and Turmoil, Liberalization and Conservatism
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During the Hu–Wen administration, Deng Xiaoping had already passed away for many years. Yet throughout the Hu–Wen period, traces of Deng Xiaoping’s theory could be seen everywhere.
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Hu and Wen were typical preservers rather than innovators. What they did was to follow the steps of Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin, continue focusing on development, and make minor repairs and adjustments to address new problems or increasingly acute contradictions and deficiencies. The formula of “one central task and two basic points” was inherited word for word by Hu and Wen. The economy continued to soar, politics remained authoritarian, and people continued to “get rich quietly.” This period can be called “the era of Deng Xiaoping without Deng Xiaoping.”
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During the Hu–Wen period, the drawbacks of reform and opening-up became increasingly apparent: the widening wealth gap and solidification of social strata, the bottleneck faced by economic reform due to lagging political reform, increasingly rampant corruption, and intensified social contradictions. Thus, the stability-maintenance system emerged. In a broad sense, stability maintenance existed from the moment the CCP took power. But the specialized apparatus designed specifically to suppress civic movements, social movements, rights defense actions, and other collective incidents or individual acts of activism took shape during the Hu–Wen era.
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The Hu–Wen administration also faced pressure for political democratization. They were unwilling and unable to address this problem head-on, instead letting it drag on through the inertia of the regime and the stability-maintenance system. Hu and Wen neither wanted to regress nor to advance further in reform and opening-up. In dealing with political and social issues, their attitude was mostly ambiguous and equivocal. Radical political movements were suppressed, but moderate opposition forces grew. The rapid development of the internet provided citizens with relatively free conditions to explore history and comment on contemporary realities. Internet controls were still not very strict at that time, and the atmosphere of freedom and democracy permeated online spaces, often influencing the offline environment as well. The spread of the internet unexpectedly created a space of limited freedom within Chinese civil society, which had been heavily suppressed by the stability-maintenance system. The slogan “watching together changes China” became immensely popular at the time.
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Under this simultaneously tight and loose condition, the Hu–Wen administration came to an end. At his final press conference, Wen Jiabao stated: “If political reform does not proceed, the tragedy of the Cultural Revolution could happen again,” which could be regarded as expressing an inclination toward change and opposition to regression. Both Hu and Wen were technocrats who acted according to established procedures; they had neither strong political ambition nor a desire for autocracy, nor did they possess the courage or ability to carry out bold reforms. They could only continue the old policies of the Deng and Jiang eras in a routine manner and lead the CCP in a silent and anxious governance over China.
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(6) The Xi Jinping Era: A Sudden Reversal of the Liberal Direction and the Terror of the Leviathan Chains Tightening Rapidly
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Just when people believed China would continue stumbling forward along a path of gradual reform, with the authorities conducting limited transformation or at least not backsliding, and when civil society forces seemed to be maturing, Xi Jinping’s rise reversed everything. The reversal came as something of a surprise to the Chinese public and to the world, yet it did indeed happen—and it will profoundly influence twenty-first-century China and the world.
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In his first year in power, Xi Jinping briefly displayed a posture sympathetic to liberalism. He declared that he would deepen reform and opening-up, carry out a strong anti-corruption campaign, and achieve national rejuvenation. For a moment, the country appeared to be moving upward. But in 2013, the situation shifted dramatically. Using the Southern Weekly New Year’s editorial incident as a marker, China’s limited press freedom was stripped away. Later, the “Party media must bear the Party’s surname” initiative and the crackdown on the magazine Yanhuang Chunqiu further realized the CCP’s total control over public opinion. The successive shutdowns or forced closures of civic organizations and public-interest institutions such as Gongmeng, Chuan Zhixing, and Yirenping destroyed the fragilely emerging organized civil power in China. The “709 Crackdown” struck at the core force of civic rights defense—the community of rights lawyers—making it extremely difficult for countless victims to seek justice through legal channels, rendering the CCP’s slogan of “ruling the country according to law” completely hollow. The “Seven Prohibitions” and the “Sixteen Points” symbolized the strengthening of control over universities during the Xi era; institutions that should have been the forefront of scholarship, enlightenment, and social transformation were turned into lifeless prisons.
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Xi Jinping not only expended immense effort to suppress opposition outside the Party, but also struck mercilessly against internal factions challenging him. Ren Zhiqiang, a leading figure among the “Second Red Generation,” was sentenced to 18 years in prison; Cai Xia, a professor at the Central Party School, was expelled and forced into exile—these are examples. His massive anti-corruption campaign in the first term likewise served the purpose of purging political opponents and enforcing unified command; he repeatedly spoke of eliminating the “poisonous legacy” of Bo Xilai and Wang Lijun, and sent high-ranking officials such as Sun Zhengcai, who refused to yield to him, into prison. The principle of “no unauthorized discussion of the Central leadership” rendered the long-promoted concept of “intra-Party democracy” completely void. With the convening of the 19th Party Congress and the subsequent removal of term limits, the fixed-term system and collective leadership model once practiced by the CCP came to an end. Xi Jinping achieved unprecedented political centralization, becoming the most powerful CCP leader since Mao Zedong.
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Xi Jinping not only emulates Mao Zedong in controlling power, but also in his governing style and value orientation. For example, he revived political slogans from the Mao era such as “the Party leads everything: the Party, government, military, populace, and education.” He openly proposed learning from Mao-era grassroots governance models such as the “Fengqiao Experience.” The Xi administration increasingly promoted the study of Mao-era “Long March spirit” and “Jinggangshan spirit,” turning the promotion of “red traditions” into a part of political education for the population. In contrast, reform and opening-up has been mentioned less and less; the 40th anniversary of reform and opening-up in 2018 was commemorated in a very low-key manner. Anything related to “bourgeois liberalization” has been strictly prohibited—for example, Chief Justice Zhou Qiang declared that China must firmly resist Western ideas such as “constitutional democracy” and “judicial independence.”
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In foreign relations, Xi Jinping proposed the “Belt and Road Initiative,” aggressively expanded China’s external influence, and competed with the United States. In the first years of his administration, Xi’s foreign posture was quite assertive, including a highly publicized military parade to commemorate the 70th anniversary of victory in the War of Resistance Against Japan. But as domestic economic conditions deteriorated and international resistance to the CCP deepened, the regime lowered its posture toward neighboring countries such as Japan, South Korea, and India, while focusing on coping with the U.S. trade war, the diplomatic and intelligence containment by the “Five Eyes Alliance,” and Europe’s human-rights pressure. Yet due to the Huawei–Meng Wanzhou incident, the COVID-19 pandemic, and issues related to Hong Kong and Xinjiang, the CCP regime has become increasingly constrained internationally and is sinking ever deeper into a quagmire.
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Toward the two domestic “hot regions,” Hong Kong and Xinjiang, Xi Jinping adopted extremely hardline strategies. After defeating the “Occupy Central” and anti-extradition movements, the CCP imposed the “Hong Kong National Security Law” and altered the Hong Kong electoral system to squeeze liberal forces in Hong Kong and block their influence on the mainland, attempting to bring Hong Kong fully under the CCP’s rule. In Xinjiang, the Xi regime has suppressed resistance by Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic groups through the construction of concentration camps and massive, long-term detention, maintaining stability through violence and high pressure. Although the CCP’s actions in Hong Kong and Xinjiang have been widely condemned and sanctioned by the international community, it shows no sign of retreat. Yet such extreme actions face immense pressure and risks both within these regions and externally, and it remains unclear how long this radical approach can be sustained. The regime’s forceful actions in these two important frontier regions demonstrate the coexistence of confidence and anxiety in the CCP under Xi when confronting intense internal contradictions.
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Xinjiang is the most suffocating region under Xi Jinping’s rule, but this high-pressure stability-maintenance model exists to varying degrees in other regions as well, and the Xinjiang model could be implemented nationwide at any time. The lockdowns, quarantines, and behavioral surveillance measures introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic have gradually pushed this possibility into reality. By relying on modern information technology to create a system of big-data totalitarianism, the Xi regime possesses unprecedented control over society and the people. This level of control was unattainable even in the Mao era, because the technology did not exist to monitor and record every move of every individual. The Xi regime not only possesses the necessary technological means, but also exercises power without any restraint or oversight. A black-box regime transforms the population into transparent subjects; facing the overwhelming technological advantage, ordinary people can only be slaughtered and exploited.
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The nearly ten years of Xi Jinping’s rule constitute a highly distinctive period for the CCP. It lacks the violent revolution and brutal mass movements of the Mao era, yet retains the anti-intellectualism, barbarity, and paranoia of Mao’s governance. It does not emphasize reform and opening-up and economic development as clearly as Deng Xiaoping did, yet it consolidates the bureaucratic capitalism, wealth gap, and moral decay produced under Deng’s line. The CCP in the Xi era appears, like in the Hu–Wen period, to be delaying reform and drifting along, but Xi is clearly creating a historical countercurrent by driving the country backward and actively resisting the transformation of the times. Xi has also imitated Mao Zedong by proposing the concept and blueprint of the “Chinese Dream,” and he has modified Deng Xiaoping’s conception and practice of “socialism withChinese characteristics,” attempting to reshape the CCP and create a prosperous era led by himself, becoming another “great man” after Mao and Deng, and even attempting to surpass their “achievements.” But in reality, Xi’s ambition has failed. Even if he continues to rule for another ten or twenty years, there is no sign that his dream can succeed in the future. Rather, he will drag China into an even darker abyss. Under Xi’s leadership, the CCP has further become a rigid interest bloc opposed to the masses, maintaining internal unity and external coherence through internal interest-binding and hierarchical distribution of spoils. It holds the country, the nation, and the people hostage, passing down this community of vested interests from one generation to the next like a game of passing the poisoned chalice.
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(7)Evolutionary Trends
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Since its founding, the characteristics of the CCP regime have continually changed, but amidst uncertainty certain patterns and trajectories can still be observed.
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Before the 1950s, the CCP was a party with strong idealistic tendencies, devoted to overthrowing the old order and achieving transformative, earth-shaking change. As the CCP gradually acquired real power, its idealism faded, and its pragmatism and utilitarianism became increasingly pronounced. After seizing power—and especially after the 1990s—the CCP gradually transformed into a conservative party guarding vested interests and preserving the existing order, with a leftist façade and a fundamentally rightist essence. It is obvious that the CCP has evolved from a party steeped in ideology into a group driven primarily by interests.
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The CCP has gone through several stages: from decentralization to centralization, then back to decentralization, and once again to centralization. Before Mao Zedong consolidated power, no leader within the CCP held absolute authority. Only in the Mao era did the Party leader become unquestionable. During the Deng era, Party leadership was somewhat dispersed; during the Hu–Wen period, collective decision-making was further implemented. But under Xi Jinping, the CCP has once again become a highly centralized system where everything is “fixed by one authority,” and the Party’s top leader is absolute.
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In dealing with democratic politics, public demands, and foreign relations, the CCP has oscillated between openness and conservatism, but its overall tendency has been conservative. In the 1940s and the 1980s, the CCP displayed strong inclinations toward democracy, openness, and inclusiveness. But during most other periods, it has firmly gripped political power and constructed high walls of domination through institutions, ideology, and instruments of violence, treating democratic demands and the free and open outside world with vigilance.
(This article is authored by Wang Qingmin (王庆民), a Chinese writer living in Europe and a researcher on international politics.)