China’s Cadres Sent to School

The Communist Party remains firmly in control of China, although a small number of members are wayward and corrupt, a senior party official said Thursday, providing a rare peek at the internal machinery of an organization with nearly 70 million members.

Li Jingtian, deputy head of the party’s secretive Organization Department, told reporters that a mass education campaign launched in January to spur discipline among members and ensure the party’s “advanced nature” was achieving noteworthy results.

Since the beginning of the year, millions of Chinese government workers have attended classes designed to strengthen party ideology, spur selfcriticism and encourage stability.

The back-to-school program, launched by President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao two years into their jobs, is designed to shore up the organization’s power base, stem abuses, improve the party’s public image and contain dissent.

China has introduced more checks and balances and is otherwise embracing competition in the economic sphere as a way of fighting inefficiency and corruption, but it continues to oppose competition in the political realm.

The Mao-style education campaign, in which party members are encouraged to think in unison, seems at odds with the blizzard of toothpaste brands, trendy clubs blaring rap music and growing individuality found elsewhere in this society.

Educating nearly 70 million people, even in sessions that last just a few hours, is no easy task. Li said the first group of 13.9 million members at 801,000 party chapters, most of them based in workplaces, had essentially wrapped up its training. Most of these members are reportedly government workers and party employees, the easiest ones to reach and motivate.

A second group of 30 million members at 1.8 million organizations are on deck, Li said, most drawn from quasi-governmental organizations. The last group, about 26 million people, will be recruited largely from the rural areas.

Whether the training will instill the sort of lofty ideals the party hopes, particularly among younger members often more concerned with salaries than solidarity, remains to be seen.

An employee at a company in Beijing who recently attended a required study session hosted by her danwei, or work unit, said she didn’t retain much.

“A few of our managers stood up and gave speeches,” the twentysomething employee said on the condition that she not be identified for fear of being reprimanded. “It was very boring. I only stayed an hour and mostly just chatted with friends. Some people used the time to catch up on their reading. I can’t really remember what they said.”

Attendees were told to write an essay on what they had learned and how it would improve their work, she said.

“I haven’t written it,” she added. “I’ll wait and see if I can get away without doing it. No one really takes this very seriously.”

The Communist Party has retained its grip on power in the face of wrenching social change by delivering rapid economic growth, lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty and keeping a tight lid on political, religious, nonprofit and Internet movements that might challenge its authority.

One of the party’s biggest recent headaches has been a spate of sometimes violent uprisings in rural areas. Many involve farmers and laborers feeling increasingly left behind by the growing gap between the rich and poor. In one incident last month, six people were killed in northern China when armed men attacked villagers protesting seizure of their land to build a power plant.

Li said he was confident that the training would reduce the number of “mass incidents,” although the campaign was not a cure-all. “I have to admit that the possibility of [eliminating them] is really very small,” he added.

Another growing challenge to the party’s legitimacy is corruption and the public perception that many cadres think more about padding their bank accounts than serving China’s 1.3 billion people.

“It is true, some of our grass-roots cadres are probably less competent and not able to dissipate problems,” Li said. “Others get corrupted and use their positions for personal gain.”

Many decisions involving permits, land allocation and entry into private markets are still made on the basis of politics and personal contacts, not merit.

“It is possible to get rich in China without being a party official,” said one Beijing-based diplomat who requested anonymity. “But it’s difficult to get rich without having close connections to the party.”

One longtime party member said corruption among senior officials was somewhat controlled because the cost of being discovered had risen sharply under the new leadership. But it’s business as usual at lower levels, he added, because the risk of being punished remains small.

Some analysts said the ongoing education campaign might provide a convenient way for Hu to sideline enemies within the ranks and consolidate his power as president.

Li said the education program was not designed to purge members, although 49,000 were disqualified last year for unspecified offenses.

Internet reports that up to 1.9 million members had resigned from the party were “false rumors spread by people with ulterior motives,” he said, an apparent reference to the Falun Gong spiritual and exercise movement banned in China.

Approximately 2.4 million people, including 894 owners of private businesses, joined the nation’s Communist Party last year, officials said. That represented an 8.2% jump from 2003.