The initial public offering of Ant Group, a financial subsidiary of Alibaba Group, was halted at the end of 2020, and the group was ordered to limit its operations. After openly criticizing the state’s stranglehold on the banking sector, he became the target of an orchestrated attack by Party authorities. The charismatic Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group, is a prime example. According to Party guidelines, they are expected not only to remain loyal to the party line, but also to “regulate their words and actions,” “cultivate a healthy lifestyle,” and remain “modest and discreet.” And those who do not play the game may suffer consequences.
I WAS ONCE AN AVOWED COMMUNIST THEN CHINA TARGETED GAMERS PROFESSIONAL
This injunction to loyalty and professional ethics, in line with the image the CCP wishes to present to the general public, applies to all its members, including those from the private sector. Not only have potential opponents of Xi’s personal power been removed, but control over officials has increased, as has the fight against the “four bad styles”: formalism, bureaucratism, hedonism, and extravagance. The aim is to guarantee the morality and loyalty of both leaders and members through a massive anti-corruption campaign.
Under Xi Jinping, internal discipline has also got stronger. Indeed, internal training courses show that the CCP presents itself as a neoliberal-inspired managerial structure, aiming at efficient management of the population and the economy. While “working for communism” was one of the main reasons for joining the Party during the Maoist era (1949–76), today’s motivations are more pragmatic: primarily to facilitate one’s professional advancement. Ten years later, they have overtaken them, making up 50 percent of the membership, compared to less than 35 percent of workers and peasants. In 2010, “professionals and managers” with higher education qualifications already equaled peasants and workers in number. Their enrollment into the CCP has accelerated under President Xi Jinping (from 2013 onward), with the aim of forming “a group of individuals from the business world who are determined to march with the Party.”Īs a result, the CCP has rapidly become more and more elitist.
The selected businessmen and women become members of the political elite, ensuring that their businesses are at least partially protected from predatory officials. In the early 2000s, then-President Jiang Zemin lifted the ban on recruiting entrepreneurs from the private sector, previously seen as class enemies, so that the CCP would no longer represent only the “revolutionary” classes-workers, peasants, and the military-but also the country’s “advanced productive forces.” The CCP, which continues to grow and now has some 95 million members (around 6.5 percent of the population), has gradually transformed itself into a “white-collar” organization.
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