Napoleon dubbed China the “sleeping giant” and I remember back in the 1980’s, studying China in college, when it was still stuck with that moniker. Well, China is wide awake now and quickly becoming the dominating global power. In just a 15 year span, their GDP grew 280% and their poverty level was cut by 50%. Following Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” which disastrously resulted in nearly 40 million deaths caused by starvation, the Chinese Communist Party has a new and improved outlook on governing their 1.3 billion people. No longer interested in being a welfare state the “3 Irons” were dismantled; the “Iron Chair” – a life-long job, the “Iron Rice Bowl” – a promise of employment, and “The Iron Wage” – a guaranteed income and pension. No longer are entrepreneurs shunned and labeled “subversives”. Today 20% of all GDP is generated from privately owned companies. The new China: entrepreneurs, cosmopolitan cities, capitalist business ventures, foreign investments and a Chinese stock market, labor unions, and lawyers.
Richard McGregor is a veteran reporter for the Financial Times and has been documenting facts about Northern Asia for the past two decades. The Party provides an in-depth explanation of how the Communist party members think, act, govern, and maintain control over the masses; the courts, the press, religion, the police, and all major industries: oil, petrochemicals, steel, railways, airports and aviation, electricity, health care, banking, education, and the civil service. It is impossible for an outsider to break the code of secrecy that surrounds the party, but McGregor shares a wealth of information about the party leaders, the corruption within the system, the “pay-to-play” mentality of those in power, and the frenzied crusade for total control. Despite China’s thriving “capitalism with Chinese characteristics” market economy, the country is not leaning towards a republican government. The communist party has more control today than ever before. Learn about their likes and dislikes, their strengths and weaknesses. It won’t surprise you that they are rewriting history to eliminate negative things about the party, and censoring textbooks: obliterating all reference to Jesus, the protest and massacre at Tiananmen Square, and the famine caused by Mao’s “central planning policy”.
I can’t say for certain there is no other book on the market with such a comprehensive, in-side view of China’s government elite, but if there is, I have yet to find it. Impersonal and dispassionate, as one might expect a professional reporter to write, McGregor educates the reader about modern China and the all-powerful and mysterious Communist Party and it’s life-time politicians in this fascinating documentary.
Rated 4.5 Stars. I use a rating scale of 1 to 5. Books rated 1, I seldom finish; books rated 2, I usually finish but would never recommend to anyone. 5 is the highest rating.