4d ago

SCMP – China's Communist Party tops 100 million members but growth is slowing

www.scmp.com

China’s Communist Party tops 100 million members but growth is slowing

The CPC has over 100 million members for the first time!

13 comments

China has its fair share of non-political people and absolute tesla driving idiots, xhs definitely makes that clear that China is just another place
- That's kind of the point of a communist party in a DOTP. It exists to facilitate the democratic political engagement of the bulk of the populace who, in any normal society under normal circumstances, are not particularly politically active.
  
  What dotp mean? Demoxracy of the people?
- Anarchist i reckon?
Given that population growth has been declining in China for 4-5 decades, it seems obvious that the party membership growth would slow too.
- No, growth in the party is slowly intentionally because the party was taking on too many people who weren't really "communists" in any political sense, and were just using the party to get ahead. Crendentialism basically. So the party tightened up requirements to entry, making it far more difficult to actually join to weed out the people who were doing so just to like join a new social club to socially climb.
  
  The much more difficult work is purging or bringing into alignment already-existing party members with stronger commitments to liberalism than communism.
China’s ruling party continues to be the world’s No 2 political party by membership strength, after India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party – which claimed to have crossed 140 million members last week.
I assume they let anyone in. How many members has the CPC rejected in the last 40 years?
- Probably quite a few, but it's more likely most people don't bother trying to considering the process to enter the CPC is fairly strict; if I remember you have to undertake rigorous party study sessions, pass examinations and background checks, and have an existing party member be your mentor throughout the whole process. And this can take at least several years before you're finally admitted.
  According to this SCMP article around 32 000 people left the CPC in 2010, but the party official who quoted this number didn't give a breakdown of it.
- However, the rate of membership growth has continued to slow, with one insider attributing this to stricter screening by the Central Organisation Department (COD), the party’s top personnel office...
  An official source familiar with the matter said the party wanted to “get the right people from the start”, as it has been tightening the political screening process, resulting in more rejections and longer probation periods.
I don't see this as a bad thing. I've talked with CPC members who cared little for Marxism and were basically just glorified public servants. Nice people though.
Yeah? Sounds impressive, but how many members can they bottom?

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