> “Along with the personal identifying details of 1.95 million communist party members, mostly from Shanghai, there are also the details of 79,000 communist party branches, many of them inside companies”.
According to Wikipedia, there are 91 million members, so this isn't a complete list. I wonder what the source database was for.
I'd imagine that a large number of those 91 million are people who hold membership for the purpose of group identification and virtue signalling, not because they have a specific role in a hierarchy.
> I'd imagine that a large number of those 91 million are people who hold membership for the purpose of group identification and virtue signalling, not because they have a specific role in a hierarchy.
You're correct that most party members have "have [no] specific role in a hierarchy," but "group identification and virtue signalling," seriously? That feels like an inappropriate transfer of some stereotypes of the English-speaking left to the CCP.
My understanding is that most people who join do so because being a member offers small privileges, like preferences in hiring.
> "group identification and virtue signalling," seriously? That feels like an inappropriate transfer of some stereotypes of the English-speaking left to the CCP.
Why do you feel it is inappropriate? Human nature is human nature, its not as though Chinese are a sub-species of humans that has different psychology than American sub-species. People signaling values and identifying with groups is human nature.
> My understanding is that most people who join do so because being a member offers small privileges, like preferences in hiring.
Yes there are benefits to being in a group and sharing values with those in power.
Because my understanding is that most Chinese people do not consider the CCP to be virtuous nor do they "identify" with it. That's not to say they're dissidents, but more semi-deliberately indifferent and have knowledge of and experience with government corruption. Even people who work for the party are often just going through the motions.
> Because my understanding is that most Chinese people do not consider the CCP to be virtuous nor do they "identify" with it.
Perhaps its not meant to signal virtue to the majority but instead to the decision makers. Perhaps the majority do not identify as a member but the members do.
> Even people who work for the party are often just going through the motions.
> Perhaps its not meant to signal virtue to the majority but instead to the decision makers. Perhaps the majority do not identify as a member but the members do.
That's not "virtue signalling." If everyone involved in the interaction is cynical about the organization, no virtue is being signaled. The "decision makers" most of all know the true nature of the party.
I think the word you're really looking for is just "signalling" or at least a different kind of signaling than "virtue signalling." You're really torturing that term into meaninglessness here.
"Virtue signalling" really only applies to situations where at least some people genuinely think they're signalling virtue or that others would actually perceive it that way. One end or the other can be cynical, but not both.
> That's not "virtue signalling." If everyone involved in the interaction is cynical about the organization, no virtue is being signaled. The "decision makers" most of all know the true nature of the party.
Its naive to assume that none of them consider the true nature of the party to be what constitutes "virtuous."
> I think the word you're really looking for is just "signalling" or at least a different kind of signaling than "virtue signalling." You're really torturing that term into meaninglessness here.
Sure.
> "Virtue signalling" really only applies to situations where at least some people genuinely think they're signalling virtue or that others would actually perceive it that way. One end or the other can be cynical, but not both.
Value signaling is perhaps a more value-neutral way of expressing the same sentiment.
Hi, I'm the person who introduced the term "virtue signalling" into this thread. I stand by it. When allegiance to certain political forces is considered virtuous, being a member can be a signal of virtue to other members of the party.
Not to agree or disagree on Sky News Australia. Just on the dataset itself, by searching for my previous company I found many people I know of, and I can at least say that the 'hometown', 'organization' and 'education' information is accurate for a few I checked.
So? Thu Guardian is the equivalent of the New York Times of the Washington Post in the USA, that does not mean you can't believe anything they print. News sources have biases, as long as you know those biases and (very important) know and acknowledge your own bias you can and should use those sources to get an idea of what the news really is. This is why I do not use a single source, nor a single aggregator as a news source but instead look at sources ranging from the Guardian to the Wall Street Journal as well as a bevy of "alternative" news sources. The 'net makes this possible, use the possibility. Just squawking about the bias of sources which do not correspond with your own bias is a part of the problem, not a part of the solution.
By the way, it is disheartening to see the growth in the number of throw-away accounts used in discussions like these. Stand up for your opinions, dare to voice them, don't hide for the cancel mob. Use your real account even if - or maybe especially if - you expect the mob to pounce. It is only when "established" users show they are not afraid to speak up that the mob can be beaten.
Usually communist party members in your company in China isn't a big secret, it's pretty much public info because the top 10% elite usually get invited and are allowed into the party. Also the desks of communist party members in the company will usually have communist party emblems and chinese flags indicating their status as a Communist Party member, it's not taboo to do so. Most top companies will gather top job candidates which will include communist party members who work as lawyers, developers, etc (aka normal jobs) and they will list their CCP membership on their resumes. So this is more doxxing I would say as the vast majority of communist party members working at a company are regular people.
> Yes this is true. Being a party member is just passing a test and paying the membership fee.
Not really. I have a friend who nearly joined in college. They had several rounds of applications: the first few went to kids with connections (or whose connections put them in a good position, e.g. appointed to be some kind of student government thing). Once those groups were exhausted, other kids got a chance. My friend was a very good student, but got a no-so-subtle message from the school official running the process that they wouldn't be considered without a bribe.
Depending on when your friend was in college, it feels like things may have changed in the last 5 years. Anecdotally I've heard college recruitment efforts are more intense nowadays. Possibly because the younger generations are less interested in joining now, at the same time the leadership has a strong nationalistic bent.
> My friend was a very good student, but got a no-so-subtle message from the school official running the process that they wouldn't be considered without a bribe.
Based on my experience in China, this sounds 100% correct.
This is a privacy fallacy to fall for and big tech (ad) companies do this a lot.
Just because a single or few instances of a particular information attribute is public, it's quite different compared to majority of instances being available at the same time - that this made it to front page of HN shows it's at least interesting news to many.
Yes, when working in any company, including foreign companies, domestically, CCP membership status is always included on the resume. It's generally seen by employers as a positive point.
I have never received a mainland Chinese resume overseas, so would not know about the overseas question.
Edit: The parent originally asked "even when working in foreign companies? even when working in foreign countries?"
According to the news articles about this story, some of the names on the list were working for western companies and UK consulates. Do you think those people list their CCP membership on their resumes?
If they are hired through normal hiring portals, listing the party membership status is a standard feature of said portals, so yes it would have been known. If they hire directly, they probably asked and may have been lied to. I highly doubt that Chinese tradecraft is so bad as to compromise purposefully and successfully planted undercover agents on assignment with foreign nation-states or similar by listing them as party members in low security databases... but you never know! Bureaucracies being what they are...
You really think people working for the UK consulate and major Western corporations would disclose their CCP membership on their job applications? Seems a bit naive to me, unless I’m missing some sarcasm...
Many people join the party in college. Yes, the best people are encouraged to join it. You have to write an application letter, and it is limited, so you can also get rejected (look at me :)). You have to participate in volunteering and so on.
If you want to try it out on a Mac laptop you can do the following:
brew install datasette # if you don't have it already
wget https://gitlab.com/shanghai-ccp-member-db/shanghai-ccp-member-db/-/raw/master/shanghai-ccp-member.db
datasette shanghai-ccp-member.db --setting sql_time_limit_ms 10000 --setting facet_time_limit_ms 10000
I recommend bumping up those default time limits because the database has almost 2,000,000 rows in and faceting will time out if you don't increase them.
You can easily facet by sex, ethnicity, hometown and organization using the cog icon on each column. The data is all in Chinese so you'll need to run it through a translator to see what it means.
Also interesting: the latest version of my sqlite-utils CLI tool added a new "sqlite-utils analyze-tables shanghai-ccp-member.db" command which outputs interesting statistics about table columns - documentation here: https://sqlite-utils.readthedocs.io/en/stable/cli.html#analy...
Here's a partial output from running it against that database file:
About 99% are Han people (which is not surprising considering it is Shanghai);
Most common org: retirement branch. Actually, so many of them has "退休" in it which means "retirement". Can it tell us something about the "age" distribution as well?
Education: most common - Bachelor's degree. Secondly common is a professional university degree, which is considered a second-class compared to the Bachelor's degree. "93859" of them only graduates from primary school, which should overlap highly with older people.
> Actually, so many of them has "退休" in it which means "retirement".
Actually, there are 77453 distinct values for the "organization" field, so retired people are only the biggest group because employed people are divided according to where they are employed.
As for the age distribution, the OP on LIHKG posted it in a reply: https://lih.kg/qwNiyuX
member.name: (2/11)
Total rows: 1956731
Null rows: 0
Blank rows: 0
Distinct values: 1072319
Most common:
650: 张伟 - Zhang Wei (Grand)
621: 张敏 - Zhang Ming (Agile)
620: 王伟 - Wang Wei (Grand)
579: 张磊 - Zhang Lei (Open)
507: 王磊 - Wang Lei (Open)
488: 陈洁 - Chen Jie (Clean)
479: 张杰 - Zhang Jie (Outstanding)
448: 王勇 - Wang Yong (Brave)
442: 李伟 - Li Wei (Grand)
434: 张静 - Zhang Jing (Calm)
I've annotated the names with their meanings because I find them pretty interesting. In Chinese, names should not overlap (unlike most of the rest of the world, where names are chosen by picking from a list of common names, in China, names are chosen by picking a unique sequence of characters not used by anyone else you're aware of).
These names are all one-character long, rather than the standard two characters, and the surnames are some of the most common in China, so they end up having nonzero overlap.
member.sex: (3/11)
Total rows: 1956731
Null rows: 0
Blank rows: 0
Distinct values: 2
Most common:
1229406: 男 - male
727325: 女 - female
member.ethnicity: (4/11)
Total rows: 1956731
Null rows: 0
Blank rows: 0
Distinct values: 51
Most common:
1935764: 汉族 - Han
7636: 回族 - Hui
4588: 满族 - Manchu
2282: 蒙古族 - Mongol
1468: 土家族 - Tujia
954: 壮族 - Zhuang
741: 朝鲜族 - Korean
638: 苗族 - Miao
351: 白族 - Bai
319: 侗族 - Dong
member.hometown: (5/11)
Total rows: 1956731
Null rows: 0
Blank rows: 0
Distinct values: 2875
Most common:
846850: 上海 - Shanghai
350361: null
139903: 江苏 - Jiangsu
80958: 浙江 - Zhejiang
29935: 上海宝山 - Shanghai Baoshan district
29705: 山东 - Shandong
26366: 上海崇明 - Shanghai Chongming county
26120: 安徽 - Anhui
17697: 上海嘉定 - Shanghai Jiading district
14745: 上海南汇 - Shanghai Nanhui district
member.organization: (6/11)
Total rows: 1956731
Null rows: 0
Blank rows: 0
Distinct values: 77453
Most common:
3533: 退休支部 - retirement branch
1925: 第一党支部 - first party branch
1796: 机关党支部 - party branch
1759: 校逾期未归 - [not completed]
1552: 退休一支部 - retirement 1 branch
1528: 第二党支部 - second party branch
1508: 退休二支部 - retirement 2 branch
1443: 退休党支部 - retirement party branch
1243: 第三党支部 - third party branch
955: 离退休党支部 - ending retirement party branch
member.education: (11/11)
Total rows: 1956731
Null rows: 0
Blank rows: 0
Distinct values: 22
Most common:
589531: 大学 - university
360788: 大专 - junior college
300370: 初中 - in progress
230117: 普通高中 - regular high school
161803: 硕士研究生 - master's student
158041: 中等专科 - specialized secondary school
93859: 小学 - elementary
25460: 博士研究生 - doctoral student
14729: 技工学校 - vocational high school
8894: 其他 - other
> These names are all one-character long, rather than the standard two characters, and the surnames are some of the most common in China, so they end up having nonzero overlap.
Two character given names aren't standard. At least in some places, in some families, they alternate between one and two characters from generation to generation.
Don’t they have something like 100 million members?
Given a population of 1.4 billion people, then this membership list is something like 7% of the population.
Some countries don’t even have 100 million people.
And it doesn’t even seem like you need to be anybody special to even join. Although I’m sure that the elite at the top, socializes often with CCP members for societal and business needs.
I’m certain that people in the west are making this out to be more of a bigger issue than it really is.
To join prior to college is pretty hard and normally with great visibility if one made it. Otherwise it’s like a chore task for common students who cannot afford go abroad and wishes to join state owned enterprise
Apparently some of the people on the list hold positions in Western companies. Which is probably of interest to those businesses and citizens of those countries.
If you’re American it’s fine to hire Americans. If you aren’t then it might depend on the nature of the work. You think China lets Americans run the great firewall for example?
Every foreign national has an oath of allegiance to their original country. Many foreign nationals also are affiliated to political parties. Why using a racist policy against Chinese?
So by this logic, in regards affiliations with political parties:
1) Foreign countries should never hire Americans that have either voted for Republicans or Democrats?
2) Or to hire Americans that registered as either a Democrat or Republican?
So, by this logic, if China took a countermeasure against this, then it would be illegal for the CEOs and corporate executives of American companies, to legally do business or transact in commerce in China.
Because they would have likely voted for a political party, or have registered to be affiliated with a political party.
Most countries don't have an oath of allegiance, at least for the general populace. I think most of the world thinks of them as some weird third reich-esque thing.
Did McCarthyism ever really go away? Socialist is still a swear word in political circles of the US. It’s the main reason we don’t have universal health care - as soon as anyone mentions it they get branded as socialist or communist. It’s also why our airlines are so crappy - I’ve always thought that trains and planes out to be nation-state level prestige projects.
You're right, McCarthyism formally stopped, but its policies remain in force. But targeting and persecuting individuals would amount to reviving the few elements that we thought were surpassed.
If it is indeed 4 years old, then it may well be just a plain leak.
If not, then it may well be an innuendo.
Zeng Qinghong, and his motherlode of scoop on every major player in the party is said to be the only reason Xi can't touch Jiang Zemin, and his first circle personally.
If new explosive leaks will emerge on current establishment in coming months, especially if they cover time in nineties-noughties, then if will be a red flag, pun intended.
Interesting speculation. Makes me wonder at some other improbable, but not impossible speculations, maybe retribution or warning shot over the arrest of media tycoon Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong...news corps might sit on whole treasure troves of leaks.
I have always assumed these information is not sensitive anyway. It is not a secret party. Party members have meetings regularly so everyone knows who is in the party or not. I didn't look into the leak though.
There is no real election in China. On paper, there is an election process like described on wikipedia, but the reality is so far from it. Yes, one can vote, but only for the person they choose. CCP literally owns the "election".
Think of it this way, Americans don’t like their names to show up on a list, and to have their privacy violated.
But why is it ok to do this to normal people of a foreign country?
What if the China government authorized a retaliation to this, and instructed their hackers to infiltrate the American voting databases.
They would post who is a registered Republican.
Who voted for what measures and which candidates.
And who donated to whatever causes. Whether it was gay rights or pro-racist laws.
As Americans, the confidentiality of your vote is considered sacred. But, it’s not really a complete secret. Since your ballot has a serial number, to ensure authenticity, and that serial number can be tied to you.
And given all the new electronic voting devices being used, I’m certain it’s now easier to make this correlation.
Anyways, certain civil behaviors still apply here. Do unto others, as you’d like it done to you.
What information is in this dataset that is interesting to people? Is it just a membership list, and is membership secret? Is it just to learn about whether famous companies have senior members in the ccp?
So much of the information in this thread is false.
You don't need any special invitation or application to join the party. In fact, NOT joining the party can be a signal and a problem, which might complicate business setup, banking applications, things like applying for a car plate, etc.
My Chinese wife's data and my address is in the DB, but I'm not sure if it does anybody any good. So? Am I the enemy of the Free World now? Will I get hate letters? Death threats? She despises CCP and Xi as much as I do, but this is also very stupid and irresponsible to put this kind of information up for everybody's access.
>You don't need any special invitation or application to join the party. In fact, NOT joining the party can be a signal and a problem, which might complicate business setup, banking applications, things like applying for a car plate, etc.
This is false information, I'd say the b word actually if you are really Chinese (you need to be a Party member to apply for car plate? WTF...)...You do need application to join the Party, and not joining the party is perfectly OK (China only has 100M Party member). It was only in decades ago that joining the Party was kind of automatic because there was not much private economy, definitely not the case for today. A lot of people still apply and join, for their own benefit, but it's a choice, not a mandatory (Neither me and my wife joined and our careers were pretty good).
He is lying only because his name is in the list and don't want US to think him as the enemy of the US. Liars are always liars. I am pretty sure there are many of these kind of people join the party to take advantage of the system. No, you don't need to join the party unless you want to climb the ladder in government offices and state institutes. It is not mandatory but it does help.
> You don't need any special invitation or application to join the party.
It used to be that you need a firm endorsement of someone that has been a member for a few years, and it's still more or less the case a lot of times. You generally need to file an application to join, and you're expected to pay membership fee on a regular basis.
CCP membership is by and large a YMMV scenario given how large the country is and how deep the organization runs. While I believe your wife might be in the situation where she felt she had to join (due to her social class, affiliation or being in a certain region), it's not common for someone to be seen as a problem if they decide not to join.
From all the years of observation and all the people that I know day to day, most of people join for certain prospect of future benefits, career or social status wise. They know very well it opens the door to another class.
Hmm, I'm a chinese, me, my parents, and most of my friends, did not join the party, and there is no problem at all.
And you actually do have to write an application to join, at least that's how it works in my city.
Old leak repurposed by newly formed IPAC, basically whose-who of anti-China politicians for anyone following the space. AKA more coordinated mccarthyism propaganda from usual suspects. Nothing much to this but doxxing a bunch of people for red scare.
101 comments
[ 53.7 ms ] story [ 3771 ms ] threadAccording to Wikipedia, there are 91 million members, so this isn't a complete list. I wonder what the source database was for.
You're correct that most party members have "have [no] specific role in a hierarchy," but "group identification and virtue signalling," seriously? That feels like an inappropriate transfer of some stereotypes of the English-speaking left to the CCP.
My understanding is that most people who join do so because being a member offers small privileges, like preferences in hiring.
Why do you feel it is inappropriate? Human nature is human nature, its not as though Chinese are a sub-species of humans that has different psychology than American sub-species. People signaling values and identifying with groups is human nature.
> My understanding is that most people who join do so because being a member offers small privileges, like preferences in hiring.
Yes there are benefits to being in a group and sharing values with those in power.
Because my understanding is that most Chinese people do not consider the CCP to be virtuous nor do they "identify" with it. That's not to say they're dissidents, but more semi-deliberately indifferent and have knowledge of and experience with government corruption. Even people who work for the party are often just going through the motions.
> Because my understanding is that most Chinese people do not consider the CCP to be virtuous nor do they "identify" with it.
Perhaps its not meant to signal virtue to the majority but instead to the decision makers. Perhaps the majority do not identify as a member but the members do.
> Even people who work for the party are often just going through the motions.
That would be covered by signaling virtue.
That's not "virtue signalling." If everyone involved in the interaction is cynical about the organization, no virtue is being signaled. The "decision makers" most of all know the true nature of the party.
I think the word you're really looking for is just "signalling" or at least a different kind of signaling than "virtue signalling." You're really torturing that term into meaninglessness here.
"Virtue signalling" really only applies to situations where at least some people genuinely think they're signalling virtue or that others would actually perceive it that way. One end or the other can be cynical, but not both.
Its naive to assume that none of them consider the true nature of the party to be what constitutes "virtuous."
> I think the word you're really looking for is just "signalling" or at least a different kind of signaling than "virtue signalling." You're really torturing that term into meaninglessness here.
Sure.
> "Virtue signalling" really only applies to situations where at least some people genuinely think they're signalling virtue or that others would actually perceive it that way. One end or the other can be cynical, but not both.
Value signaling is perhaps a more value-neutral way of expressing the same sentiment.
Virtue is relative, not objective.
I wouldn't take anything said on there as accurate or fact-checked.
By the way, it is disheartening to see the growth in the number of throw-away accounts used in discussions like these. Stand up for your opinions, dare to voice them, don't hide for the cancel mob. Use your real account even if - or maybe especially if - you expect the mob to pounce. It is only when "established" users show they are not afraid to speak up that the mob can be beaten.
I don't know anything about that data, sorry. Just the janitor.
Source on Communist Party entrance process: https://daily.jstor.org/communist-party-of-china/
Not really. I have a friend who nearly joined in college. They had several rounds of applications: the first few went to kids with connections (or whose connections put them in a good position, e.g. appointed to be some kind of student government thing). Once those groups were exhausted, other kids got a chance. My friend was a very good student, but got a no-so-subtle message from the school official running the process that they wouldn't be considered without a bribe.
Based on my experience in China, this sounds 100% correct.
Just because a single or few instances of a particular information attribute is public, it's quite different compared to majority of instances being available at the same time - that this made it to front page of HN shows it's at least interesting news to many.
I have never received a mainland Chinese resume overseas, so would not know about the overseas question.
Edit: The parent originally asked "even when working in foreign companies? even when working in foreign countries?"
You can easily facet by sex, ethnicity, hometown and organization using the cog icon on each column. The data is all in Chinese so you'll need to run it through a translator to see what it means.
Here's a partial output from running it against that database file:
About 99% are Han people (which is not surprising considering it is Shanghai);
Most common org: retirement branch. Actually, so many of them has "退休" in it which means "retirement". Can it tell us something about the "age" distribution as well?
Education: most common - Bachelor's degree. Secondly common is a professional university degree, which is considered a second-class compared to the Bachelor's degree. "93859" of them only graduates from primary school, which should overlap highly with older people.
Actually, there are 77453 distinct values for the "organization" field, so retired people are only the biggest group because employed people are divided according to where they are employed.
As for the age distribution, the OP on LIHKG posted it in a reply: https://lih.kg/qwNiyuX
These names are all one-character long, rather than the standard two characters, and the surnames are some of the most common in China, so they end up having nonzero overlap.
Two character given names aren't standard. At least in some places, in some families, they alternate between one and two characters from generation to generation.
Actually "middle school" (as opposed to 高中 "high school").
Given a population of 1.4 billion people, then this membership list is something like 7% of the population.
Some countries don’t even have 100 million people.
And it doesn’t even seem like you need to be anybody special to even join. Although I’m sure that the elite at the top, socializes often with CCP members for societal and business needs.
I’m certain that people in the west are making this out to be more of a bigger issue than it really is.
I’m sure the CCP members take an oath of allegiance to either China or CCP or both.
1) Foreign countries should never hire Americans that have either voted for Republicans or Democrats?
2) Or to hire Americans that registered as either a Democrat or Republican?
So, by this logic, if China took a countermeasure against this, then it would be illegal for the CEOs and corporate executives of American companies, to legally do business or transact in commerce in China.
Because they would have likely voted for a political party, or have registered to be affiliated with a political party.
This is a very slippery slope here.
You’ve gotta fly in First Class.
They say the air in the First Class cabin is different. It must be loaded with Perri-air [1] or something.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lz0xULQIaSU
If it is indeed 4 years old, then it may well be just a plain leak.
If not, then it may well be an innuendo.
Zeng Qinghong, and his motherlode of scoop on every major player in the party is said to be the only reason Xi can't touch Jiang Zemin, and his first circle personally.
If new explosive leaks will emerge on current establishment in coming months, especially if they cover time in nineties-noughties, then if will be a red flag, pun intended.
Oh wait, we can't talk about that.
It'll be interesting to see which politicians & tech co's continue to bend the knee to china.
Zoom's censorship has been called out many times.
https://www.npr.org/2020/11/23/937336309/welcome-to-the-part...
Coming up shortly at a Chinese github like thing near you... Republican Party membership list.
Think of it this way, Americans don’t like their names to show up on a list, and to have their privacy violated.
But why is it ok to do this to normal people of a foreign country?
What if the China government authorized a retaliation to this, and instructed their hackers to infiltrate the American voting databases.
They would post who is a registered Republican.
Who voted for what measures and which candidates.
And who donated to whatever causes. Whether it was gay rights or pro-racist laws.
As Americans, the confidentiality of your vote is considered sacred. But, it’s not really a complete secret. Since your ballot has a serial number, to ensure authenticity, and that serial number can be tied to you.
And given all the new electronic voting devices being used, I’m certain it’s now easier to make this correlation.
Anyways, certain civil behaviors still apply here. Do unto others, as you’d like it done to you.
You don't need any special invitation or application to join the party. In fact, NOT joining the party can be a signal and a problem, which might complicate business setup, banking applications, things like applying for a car plate, etc.
My Chinese wife's data and my address is in the DB, but I'm not sure if it does anybody any good. So? Am I the enemy of the Free World now? Will I get hate letters? Death threats? She despises CCP and Xi as much as I do, but this is also very stupid and irresponsible to put this kind of information up for everybody's access.
This is false information, I'd say the b word actually if you are really Chinese (you need to be a Party member to apply for car plate? WTF...)...You do need application to join the Party, and not joining the party is perfectly OK (China only has 100M Party member). It was only in decades ago that joining the Party was kind of automatic because there was not much private economy, definitely not the case for today. A lot of people still apply and join, for their own benefit, but it's a choice, not a mandatory (Neither me and my wife joined and our careers were pretty good).
You mean the plate lottery in Beijing is REALLY a lottery?..
*typo
It used to be that you need a firm endorsement of someone that has been a member for a few years, and it's still more or less the case a lot of times. You generally need to file an application to join, and you're expected to pay membership fee on a regular basis.
CCP membership is by and large a YMMV scenario given how large the country is and how deep the organization runs. While I believe your wife might be in the situation where she felt she had to join (due to her social class, affiliation or being in a certain region), it's not common for someone to be seen as a problem if they decide not to join.
From all the years of observation and all the people that I know day to day, most of people join for certain prospect of future benefits, career or social status wise. They know very well it opens the door to another class.
EDIT: I take that back, seems like "unit" is organization.
Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China https://ipac.global/#team