Most of them are in the Party for personal interest, but it doesn't matter. The systemic behaviour transcends individuals, just as when you build digital computer out of imperfect analog components.
Most of them. For a party of that is bigger the size of most nations in the world, it is almost impossible to unite those members diverse interests under a single ideal. It is more like an assumed loyalty test for CCP, or vanity number, think it more like the Prime membership, except you don't really get too many benefits from it. LoL
well, you better have the luck to own a big business first. Once you do, becoming a party member, had you wished it isn't a hard thing. No difference than rich people like Trump gets into politics eventually.
More red scare fearmongering from Bloomberg. Have they retracted their FUD about Supermicro yet?
"The lines between business and politics have become increasingly hazy in China as President Xi Jinping has led a campaign to ensure the Communist Party plays a leading role across all aspects of society." As opposed to America, where we certainly don't have any businesspeople in politics or politicians in business?
To illustrate how ridiculous that this is considered a piece of news to Westerners, consider if Chinese media reports "Taylor Swift confirmed to have voted in the election."
I don't think the term "confirmed" is the right choice here since it is confusing the action and the state. I highly doubt that the media would use the word "confirmed" if he actually just joined the party. That would be news.
USSR: 19 million (1986) out of population of 286,730,819
3rd Reich: 1945 the party reached its peak of 8 million with 63% being male and 37% being female (about 10% of the German population of 80 million).
North Korea (1988) 3 million out of 19.56 million
So it seems that most one party regimes only have less than 10% of it's population officially registered, hmm. If I am more knowledgeable, I'd make a comparison to medieval nobles and clergies tbh
(The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had 10% of it's population counted as nobles as well in 1750 or so IIRC)
I've been hearing repeatedly that the party is building up a "human shield" in case the West will start going after party members individually.
There are no benefits for an average person in China to join the party aside from your member card doubling as a free public transit ticket.
First, you can't meaningfully participate in the political process in any capacity, without already "being somebody" in the party.
Second, only 1 in 1000 of party members will ever see any chance to work in any meaningful position. Yes, the actual amount of people who do politics in China is no more than ~70-80 thousand extremely privileged people, picked among the most fanatical candidates.
Third, even if you already "is somebody," and passed the impossible odds, and be picked out from the most fanatical party members, your remit will be no more than to blindly execute edicts passed from above.
Fourth, if you survived for over 2 decades in a position of low ranked official, your brains will not. Anybody who spent so much time mentally tortured by routine work and doing meaningless, brain dead "ideological research" will have their spark extinguished, no matter how talented they were.
Fifth, when you turn a grey haired party veteran who can recite all Marx works from memory, and have a genuine chance getting to provincial or national level, you are a useless husk of a person, who can't do anything but mechanically follow the politburo.
Sixth, if you survived even that, and surpassed everybody else at doing that ritual, you end up becoming a man in ranks of Xi Jinpings.
Jiang Zemin, was the only man ever known to "hack" that system, and he is universally hated by party for that.
That's the mystery for me too. I myself met, I think, close to 100 officials in course of working in electronics industry for 11 years, and not a single one of them strayed from the stereotype I stated above.
But even with gross incompetency of individual constituents, that party as a whole, in some absurd and bizarre way, ends up settling on more or less rational policies most of the time.
I believe that's due to the entrepreneurship and hard work of the individuals in the country, and not of the political system itself.
Congratulating the CCP for lifting the country out of poverty would be like thanking the US political parties for making the USA the largest economy in the world (as opposed to the hard-working entrepreneurs and workers who built this country into what it is today.)
The Nazi party also did quite well for a period of time, also the Soviets. Also, no the CCP didn't lift half a billion people out of crippling poverty, the WTO did. The economy in China are markedly different before and after joining the WTO. America gave them a hand, hoping the market would change the system, they hoped wrong.
To the surprise of no one.
It would be silly to believe that you don't have to be a party member to play ball.
I could find it rare if Jack Ma had his origins in HK, TW or other place with a delicate relationship with Mainland but this is not the case.
So? There are almost 100 million party members in China. And higher the education you are, the party will be more persuasive in having you join them.
And it is in China, come on. Being a Communist member isn't a SIN. And Ma openly said he is a fan of Mao and would not hesitate to hand over Alipay to the 'country', had the government asked for it. So make no mistake, he joining the party is like a win-win for, both parties(no pun intended).
I think applied collectivism might be particularly difficult for Westerners to reconcile with our world view, especially those part of entrepreneurship communities.
> Being a Communist member isn't a SIN. And Ma openly said he is a fan of Mao and would not hesitate to hand over Alipay to the 'country', had the government asked for it.
I'm surprised that being a communist member isn't a sin, but being a nazi is (I assumed you do think being a nazi is), I'll skip the history lesson here, you can look both up. Also, handing Alipay, an app full of personal information to aid widespread surveillance of an authoritarian government is a sin in itself. If you don't think it is, you need to check your moral compass.
The problem with the CCP is this: the party and the state are the same thing. The CCP controls the security and armed forces, and they answer to no one but themselves. Therefore, if the party wants Jack Ma to do something, especially now that he's a member, he's subject to the disciplinary actions of the CCP, which can range from being renditioned, kidnapped, having family arrested, to house arrest and "being suicided" due to "depression". He joining the party can mean only 2 things, he condones these methods or he's completely under control by them and will execute any CCP demands, reasonable or otherwise.
This is news is because the tech sector, even in China, has traditionally been able to escape getting too tied up to the party's politics, even if they have to censor content. The fact that they have to swear party allegiance now means all that have changed, and now the tech companies have to obey to the party absolutely. Given there's effectively no check and balances to the party, this is very concerning.
It seems to have started with the Bloomberg story, which is still to be proven, and has escalated since. There was the Huawei story, the social credit system story etc.
I suspect it has something to do with the media being fed stories to boost U.S. position in the trade war. They're probably gushing themselves over getting such 'exclusive' pieces, while it's all per-planned.
It's not even far fetched, as that's exactly what happened prior to the invasion of Iraq, but if it indeed is the case, it would be a huge irony, given that we often, (correctly), point out how much control the CCP has over the press.
Not only you, I see that too. The wonderful people who make HN readers, are just beginning to discover for themselves a surreal fairyland that Chinese politics is.
The further you go down that rabbit hole, the more you ask yourself how such a crazy country as China can even exist, and the more it fires up your curiosity. After dealing with China for 11 years, I haven't come any closer to understanding that.
This nation is like the Dark God Azathoth: any attempt to understand it rationally is futile. The more it feels that trying to understand it is breaking your brain, the more you want to understand it.
After reading all the comments below, I'm quite disappointed that there are still many that equate joining the CCP as joining the Freemasons or the Republican party.
Do any of these other parties have their own secret services and armies and nukes? Do any of these parties blend completely into the state apparatus such that they are indistinguishable? Have any of the parties killed literally dozens of millions of people?
Check your moral compasses people. The Communist Party of China is communist in name only, but it's actually the Nazi party now. Wake the fuck up and learn your foreign policies and history.
46 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 94.9 ms ] threadMost people who is a somebody? So then, would that not be a description of the upper classes and the bourgeoisie?
Being able to do big business doesn't count?
With the possible exceptions of Karl Marx and Mao Zedong.
There is an oddness in reading that sentence though.
Apparently the downvoters don't get the irony.
Perhaps they should rename it to something slightly more accurate.
'Billionaires Drinking Club', perhaps.
No more than it would have if he wasn't a member.
"Why has Jack Ma joined the Freemasons? What benefit does it convey, and what constraints does it induce?"
The reasons are very likely in both situations that having an 'in' with some particular powerful group is very good for your cash-flow.
"The lines between business and politics have become increasingly hazy in China as President Xi Jinping has led a campaign to ensure the Communist Party plays a leading role across all aspects of society." As opposed to America, where we certainly don't have any businesspeople in politics or politicians in business?
I don't think the term "confirmed" is the right choice here since it is confusing the action and the state. I highly doubt that the media would use the word "confirmed" if he actually just joined the party. That would be news.
Guess it’s very selective for a reason.
3rd Reich: 1945 the party reached its peak of 8 million with 63% being male and 37% being female (about 10% of the German population of 80 million).
North Korea (1988) 3 million out of 19.56 million
So it seems that most one party regimes only have less than 10% of it's population officially registered, hmm. If I am more knowledgeable, I'd make a comparison to medieval nobles and clergies tbh
(The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had 10% of it's population counted as nobles as well in 1750 or so IIRC)
http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/regist...
There are no benefits for an average person in China to join the party aside from your member card doubling as a free public transit ticket.
First, you can't meaningfully participate in the political process in any capacity, without already "being somebody" in the party.
Second, only 1 in 1000 of party members will ever see any chance to work in any meaningful position. Yes, the actual amount of people who do politics in China is no more than ~70-80 thousand extremely privileged people, picked among the most fanatical candidates.
Third, even if you already "is somebody," and passed the impossible odds, and be picked out from the most fanatical party members, your remit will be no more than to blindly execute edicts passed from above.
Fourth, if you survived for over 2 decades in a position of low ranked official, your brains will not. Anybody who spent so much time mentally tortured by routine work and doing meaningless, brain dead "ideological research" will have their spark extinguished, no matter how talented they were.
Fifth, when you turn a grey haired party veteran who can recite all Marx works from memory, and have a genuine chance getting to provincial or national level, you are a useless husk of a person, who can't do anything but mechanically follow the politburo.
Sixth, if you survived even that, and surpassed everybody else at doing that ritual, you end up becoming a man in ranks of Xi Jinpings.
Jiang Zemin, was the only man ever known to "hack" that system, and he is universally hated by party for that.
If their political system is as incompetent as you describe, I wonder how they manage to do so well.
But even with gross incompetency of individual constituents, that party as a whole, in some absurd and bizarre way, ends up settling on more or less rational policies most of the time.
Congratulating the CCP for lifting the country out of poverty would be like thanking the US political parties for making the USA the largest economy in the world (as opposed to the hard-working entrepreneurs and workers who built this country into what it is today.)
And it is in China, come on. Being a Communist member isn't a SIN. And Ma openly said he is a fan of Mao and would not hesitate to hand over Alipay to the 'country', had the government asked for it. So make no mistake, he joining the party is like a win-win for, both parties(no pun intended).
I'm surprised that being a communist member isn't a sin, but being a nazi is (I assumed you do think being a nazi is), I'll skip the history lesson here, you can look both up. Also, handing Alipay, an app full of personal information to aid widespread surveillance of an authoritarian government is a sin in itself. If you don't think it is, you need to check your moral compass.
The problem with the CCP is this: the party and the state are the same thing. The CCP controls the security and armed forces, and they answer to no one but themselves. Therefore, if the party wants Jack Ma to do something, especially now that he's a member, he's subject to the disciplinary actions of the CCP, which can range from being renditioned, kidnapped, having family arrested, to house arrest and "being suicided" due to "depression". He joining the party can mean only 2 things, he condones these methods or he's completely under control by them and will execute any CCP demands, reasonable or otherwise.
This is news is because the tech sector, even in China, has traditionally been able to escape getting too tied up to the party's politics, even if they have to censor content. The fact that they have to swear party allegiance now means all that have changed, and now the tech companies have to obey to the party absolutely. Given there's effectively no check and balances to the party, this is very concerning.
I suspect it has something to do with the media being fed stories to boost U.S. position in the trade war. They're probably gushing themselves over getting such 'exclusive' pieces, while it's all per-planned.
It's not even far fetched, as that's exactly what happened prior to the invasion of Iraq, but if it indeed is the case, it would be a huge irony, given that we often, (correctly), point out how much control the CCP has over the press.
The further you go down that rabbit hole, the more you ask yourself how such a crazy country as China can even exist, and the more it fires up your curiosity. After dealing with China for 11 years, I haven't come any closer to understanding that.
This nation is like the Dark God Azathoth: any attempt to understand it rationally is futile. The more it feels that trying to understand it is breaking your brain, the more you want to understand it.
Do any of these other parties have their own secret services and armies and nukes? Do any of these parties blend completely into the state apparatus such that they are indistinguishable? Have any of the parties killed literally dozens of millions of people?
Check your moral compasses people. The Communist Party of China is communist in name only, but it's actually the Nazi party now. Wake the fuck up and learn your foreign policies and history.