Chinese Communist Party

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  1/10/2023
  

  China's Rising Surveillance Capacity Ill Omen for Other Modern States, Too

  by Kathleen Keller

  The inherent desire of states to protect their power and interests means that the aggressive implementation of electronic surveillance measures in China is likely to be repeated, with dire consequences for social solidarity. 

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• SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
  11/8/2021
  

  Xi Understands the Crises Facing China Better than His Propagandists Do

  by Walter Russell Mead

  Creating a heroic role for Xi in the sweep of Chinese history is an important propaganda aim, but it shows that China faces urgent problems in the here-and-now that the leader may not be able to manage.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  11/7/2021
  

  To Hold Control in China's Present, Xi Seeks to Rewrite its Past

  The Chinese Communist Party's newest official history elevates Xi as a figure of historical significance alongside Mao and Deng Xiaoping, making the country's history an instrument of political power. 

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• SOURCE: The Baffler
  9/22/2021
  

  Rebel is Right: Reassessing the Cultural Revolution

  by Chaohua Wang

  A new book by the Chinese scholar Yang Jisheng examines the Chinese Cultural Revolution's lasting impact on the Communist Party, concluding that the generation of party leaders who experienced it were indifferent to utopianism but deeply attracted to the exercise of absolute power. 

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• 9/19/2021
  

  Psychologically Speaking, Who Were the Heads of the Chinese Communist Party?

  by David Shambaugh

  Sinologist David Shambaugh's new book examines the evolution of the Chinese Communist Party and the People's Republic's role in the world through a psychological history of the CCP's leaders. Excerpted here, he offers a schematic overview of the work. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  7/25/2021
  

  Yu Ruxin is Rescuing China’s Muzzled Past, One Footnote at a Time

  “We won’t be able to truly absorb the lessons of history, and history may just repeat itself,” Mr. Yu said in an interview from Hong Kong. “It couldn’t possibly be exactly like the Cultural Revolution, but something similar can’t be ruled out.”

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• SOURCE: Foreign Policy
  7/1/2021
  

  The Chinese Communist Party Has Followed Sun Yat-sen’s Road Map

  by Peter Zarrow

  The recent course of the Chinese Communist Party follows the vision of nationalist Sun Yat-sen more than that of Karl Marx. 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  7/5/2021
  

  Unpacking The 100-Year History Of The Chinese Communist Party

  As the Chinese Communist Party turns 100 this month, NPR's Ailsa Chang talks with historian Andy B. Liu about the mark it's made on the country.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  7/1/2021
  

  At 100 Years Old, it's Time to Recognize the Chinese Communist Party is Here to Stay

  by Yi-Zheng Lian

  Unlike their Soviet predecessors, the Chinese Communist Party has figured out how to maintain a lasting hold on power. Western critics hoping for its demise will be disappointed. 

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• SOURCE: The New York Times
  October 29, 2019
  

  The Famous, Feuding Siblings Who Helped Shape Modern China

  by Jiayang Fan

  Jung Chang within “Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China” lays out the history of the Soong sisters and how they helped formed the modem Chinese Communist Party.

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• SOURCE: The Washington Post
  11-11-17
  

  China’s all-powerful leader should heed the lessons from history, former official says

  Twice Bao Tong rose within the Chinese Communist Party’s hierarchy, and twice he was dramatically cut down.

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• 12-25-16
  

  The Long History of Hostility toward Refugees

  by Laura Madokoro

  We even saw it in the Cold War when refugees by the hundreds of thousands fled China after Mao’s victory.

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• 3-20-16
  

  China’s Facing Its Worst Crisis since Tiananmen Square

  by Jonathan Adelman

  The Chinese Communist Party needs to change. But it probably won’t until it’s faced with disaster.

• SOURCE: NYT
  8-20-13
  

  CCP document condemns Western ideas; Chinese historian says "ramifications very serious"

  ...Condemnations of constitutional government have prompted dismayed opposition from liberal intellectuals and even some moderate-minded former officials. The campaign has also exhilarated leftist defenders of party orthodoxy, many of whom pointedly oppose the sort of market reforms that Mr. Xi and Prime Minister Li Keqiang have said are needed.The consequent rifts are unusually open, and they could widen and bog down Mr. Xi, said Xiao Gongqin, a professor of history at Shanghai Normal University who is also a prominent proponent of gradual, party-guided reform.“Now the leftists feel very excited and elated, while the liberals feel very discouraged and discontented,” said Professor Xiao, who said he was generally sympathetic to Mr. Xi’s aims. “The ramifications are very serious, because this seriously hurts the broad middle class and moderate reformers — entrepreneurs and intellectuals. It’s possible that this situation will get out of control, and that won’t help the political stability that the central leadership stresses.”...

• SOURCE: WaPo
  4-24-13
  

  Historian Frank Couvares on the Hollywood-China connection

  [Hollywood studios are increasingly editing their movies to cater to the Chinese market.]...Frank Couvares, a professor of history and American Studies at Massachusetts’ Amherst College, said that rather than something new, Hollywood’s readiness to cater to Chinese demands on content reflects business practices the American film industry has had in place for more than seven decades.“If back in the 1930s or ‘40s the French objected to portraying the Foreign Legion as being overly harsh on Africans, or the British were unhappy that they were being shown as too colonialistic, then Hollywood would make the edits it needed to market its product,” he said.Still, the scope of this latest iteration seems to dwarf that of its predecessors, not only because China’s economic and political clout is so immense — successive years of GDP growth rates around 8- 10 percent have made its economy the second largest in the world — but also because the country’s communist masters seem obsessed by the way Beijing is perceived abroad.

• SOURCE: WaPo
  3-28-13
  

  China's First Lady was crooner to troops who suppressed Tiananmen Square protests

  BEIJING — A photo of China’s new first lady Peng Liyuan in younger days, singing to martial-law troops following the 1989 bloody military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, flickered across Chinese cyberspace this week.It was swiftly scrubbed from China’s Internet before it could generate discussion online. But the image — seen and shared by outside observers — revived a memory the leadership prefers to suppress and shows one of the challenges in presenting Peng on the world stage as the softer side of China.The country has no recent precedent for the role of first lady, and also faces a tricky balance at home. The leadership wants Peng to show the human side of the new No. 1 leader, Xi Jinping, while not exposing too many perks of the elite. And it must balance popular support for the first couple with an acute wariness of personality cults that could skew the consensus rule among the Chinese Communist Party’s top leaders....