Why CCP Rule Can Never Lead to Civil Society in China: Stanford Economist

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Even today, economist Xu Chenggang still credits the decade he spent on a farm during China’s Cultural Revolution as the most impactful period of his life.

The farm in northeast China, 20 miles from the former Soviet Union, was by no means the only source of learning for the scholar.

After leaving there at the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, he worked and lived in some of the world’s top institutions, including Tsinghua University, the London School of Economics, Harvard, and Stanford, where he is currently with the Center on China’s Economy and Institutions.

His experience on that farm taught him a fundamental lesson for his research: the nature of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Many of those insights are in his recent book, “Institutional Genes: Origins of China’s Institutions and Totalitarianism.”

That’s because a totalitarian power won’t tolerate any self-organization of the people, which is essential to a civil society and democracy, he said.

“When I emphasize repeatedly, again and again, that a totalitarian regime would not allow for the existence of any [independent] organization, it is not from the books,” Xu told The Epoch Times. “It’s from personal experience.”

Going to the countryside was a voluntary decision for Xu. He wanted to leave Beijing to study classes in a socialist system. He arrived at the remote farm in December 1967. Instead of living with other students, he chose to live with farmers. While herding cattle and feeding horses, he also read communist works and wrote letters to his friends to share his thoughts.

However, that got him into trouble. Three years later, he was labeled an “anti-revolutionary,” and until the end of the Cultural Revolution, he was forced to perform harsh labor under monitoring. The process lasted six years.

During this time, Xu had to find out the reason for the label to seek relief from his situation.

Initially, he thought it was because his thinking was “unorthodox” or had gone outside the prevailing communist ideology. But that was not the stated reason; he had been accused of “organizing anti-revolutionary groups.”

He didn’t understand the allegation because it was fabricated. But then came a realization.

“So when this was repeated enough, then all of a sudden, I understood this was something really serious. They could take my life with this kind of crime,” Xu said.

“That helped me to understand what totalitarianism is.

“Totalitarianism means that they do not allow for the existence of any [form of independent] organization, internally and also externally.”

In his view, the CCP is not a political party because it doesn’t attract members via political competition, and its members don’t join voluntarily.

To understand the origin of the CCP, Xu said it is vital to know the organization from which it formed: the Russian Communist Party.

When Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, or Lenin, founded the Bolsheviks, he mirrored the founding principles of People’s Will, a secretive political organization, Xu wrote in his book.

As the Communist International established a branch in China, it sought to replicate this formula for success.

One major Chinese secret political organization was the Brotherhood Society, also known as the Gelaohui, said Xu. It became the foundation for the CCP’s membership and its military forces. In his book, Xu stated that early CCP leaders viewed Chinese secret societies as organizations of the oppressed class and urged Party members to join them.

A totalitarian party is based on absolute adherence to its ideology and the belief that all other ideas are wrong, Xu said.

“For the truth to prevail, you have to eliminate everything wrong,” he said. “That ideology is important because it provides a justification, provides legitimacy.”

In practice, the CCP established a tradition of eliminating all alternative views by eliminating those who espoused them. Once they are identified as enemies of the CCP’s ideology, they are not allowed to exist.

Xu said that even within the Party, disagreements are not allowed for the same reason.

In his view, purging has become a mechanism of the CCP.

“Within this kind of a structure, the political power struggle is a life-and-death struggle, and that is why it’s so brutal,” he said.

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