95 years story of political party that developed China
From Ikenna Emewu, in Shaanxi
It was just one of the days of trips in the central China towards the west.
The mission was to visit the location where the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) flourished and consolidated for 13 years between 1935 and 1948 before it won the contest to be the ruling party in 1949.
The party has remained in power till now and about to celebrate its 95 years of formation since 1921. The CCP came to existence through the influence of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) Bolshevik Revolution of about 1919.
To trace the roots that has developed China beyond imagination, Daily Sun visited Yan an, in the Shaanxi Province in central China last week.
The story of the party is an inspiration, especially for someone from Nigeria where political parties don’t seem to have any clear agenda of moving the richly endowed country in the right direction.
But the visit proved more than interesting because apart from the leaders of the party living in the valley city surrounded by high mountains, including Chairman Mao Zedong whom Daily Sun also visited his office hewn into the mountain wall like a cave, it was an opportunity to see someone that knew President Xi Jinping so well some 42 years ago.
Very close to Yan an, about 60km away, is Yanchuan. There, President Xi at the age of 16 was sent to work as secretary of the party in 1974.
When the young man whom the town credits for bringing them the first factory and later electricity in 1988, worked there, none of them imagined he could rise that high to lead the world’s largest country.
The quiet town of 1186 people made of 364 households is today a cynosure, as the office where President Xi worked is today a museum to document the history of the leader and the party he belongs to.
Photos of President Xi then and now adorned the museum . One of them is a group photo where he was seated with some other leaders of the party. President Xi is actually from Shaanxi Province, but not this town.
This part of China has a peculiar architecture called Yaodong. The tour guide described the structure as having no English language equivalent but something close to a cave. Because of the mountainous nature of the whole region, they simply fuse their buildings to the wall of the mountains that serve as wall of the building. It is like a shallow tunnel dug into the mountain where the door is an arch, and the space of the building reaches into the mountain wall. With the arrangement, the top or ceiling of the building is decked today with concrete forming a semicircular arch as the rest of the roof is actually the body of the mountain. That saves them building materials and money and also the cave-like nature has an advantage during the bitter winter of the area when the mountains are totally covered with snow. It was in such cave that President Xi lived and worked. In fact, the relic of Mao’s office is also that same structure. Yaodomg is the trademark of the area.
Directly opposite the former office of Mr. President is a humble yaodong and one of the 364 family homes. The home looks big compared with many others with a restaurant and small grocery shop fused to the west end of it.
It is the home of a man of importance and news although many don’t know him. It was happenstance that Daily Sun engaged the old man that owns the home in a discussion that later turned important. The 77-year-old Pa Shi Yuxin is someone that knows President Xi so well. When the young man worked in that party office, Pa Shi was one of the leaders there. Prior to Xi’s coming, Pa Shi had been party chief of Yanchaun in 1969.
In an interaction with him, as host of many of the visitors that were there to see what a yaodong home looks like, Shi revealed that he worked with President Xi in the office then and had fond memories of the man he said was a devoted worker, but with nothing so extraordinary to show he was going to be the leader of the country.
He said: “Oh, I remember him so well. We worked with him then, and that is why we were all happy when he became President of China. When he was here, he was the one that attracted government attention to build us a factory that processed agriculture output. Later in 1988, his efforts also brought electricity to this town. Even now he is in power, he has been here.
“I remember him as a tall young man that was so hardworking and devoted to the party. He was a very nice man that we still remember the impacts he made on us. Then nobody would have imagined he would be the leader of the country. But he was really polite and well mannered.”
Asked if he met the president last year when he visited, Pa Shi’s old and dimming eyes brightened up and he said: “Yes, when he visited last year I was with him. He even still remembered me and called me by my name. He has a good memory. We really wish him well in the leadership of China because he is one of us.”
Pa Shi, an avid smoker, who reeked of leftover stench of an earlier smoking bout still had a stick of cigarette stuck to the top of his right ear the way a carpenter holds his pencil. The stick was definitely the next victim of Pa Shi’s furnace. But during the discussion, he had to spare the tobacco and discuss his old contemporary to the visitors and he was really elated to tell the story of a successful kinsman and noted that his rise to power had been blessing and benefits to the community, especially the popularity that brings people from all over the world to visit the museum.
CCP story
No doubt, CCP has been a catalyst in the growth and evolution of China to where it is today. From the bloodshed days to the leadership days later, CCP has been on constant evolution and self-reinvention over time.
In China, the political system is complex and unique. It is like something not known elsewhere. But most of all, it is workable. Many countries that operate multi-party democracy have an opposition that is never part of the government. In China, there are eight political parties that seem to operate under the same platform.
At the National Peoples Congress (NPC) and the China Peoples Political Consultative Congress (CPPCC) at the Two Sessions, all of them gather in the same auditorium and decide on what the country’s leadership and its policies should be. This also includes the parties that rule in Hong Kong and Taiwan. China prides herself with another complexity known as One Country, Two Systems. And politically, China means CCP, as CCP means China.
By CCP’s creative system, the NPC that elects the president is made of members of the opposition parties and some other interests and certainly with the CCP members in the majority. Even the CPPCC has these other members.
The party has been in constant shift in principle and paradigm as against the rigid socialist, Marxist/Leninist ideology. While the excessive fantasy of a socialist world failed USSR and others, the CCP found a way out of extinction through creativity of change.
That shift, blend and tilt has created an amalgam that stands midway between capitalism and its extremes in the West and the other extreme of the prism – socialism, as practised by USSR and East European countries then.
In China today, all successful citizens in every field are never outcasts in the CCP because they made it big. Instead, those that hit the limelight and highways outside the party or as non-CCP members are adopted and given high ranking places as role models.
From Jack Ma of Alibaba fame to Yao Ming, from Li Na to the richest business moguls of China, all are CCP policymaking team members. At the 2016 Two Sessions I reported, they were all present.
Antagonists would sneer that China is not democratic. But China under the CCP is not in anarchy with its system? China under the CCP is not insular or retarded; not threatened by extinction or gasping for breath. Instead, China is as buoyant as the best of democracies and a good and workable system is assessed by the results it produces.
China is called a party state with a flourishing merger between the state and the party. It’s a system where almost every civil servant in China, every academic, every student, every artisan, every trader, every researcher or technocrat is a member of the CCP, even most journalists.
Daily Sun also spoke with the head of African Affairs in the International Department of the Central Committee of the CCP, Mr. Wang Heming. One of the concerns I raised with him is how communist, ideologically speaking, the party still is.
He admitted that over 40 years, arguments on this issue had been heated among the leadership and membership of the party. But at last, it was settled as a matter not weighty enough to rock the boat.
He said even in the day of Mao Zedong, the most compelling objective of the party was to serve the people and attend to their needs and make a better society. Wang’s worry is only about whether the system works. He argues that CCP’s system is good for China, and since the party has been in power since 1949, and moved the country in the direction of progress, it has what it takes to remain relevant.
China has developed its form of communism with Chinese characters. Marxism came into being over 120 years ago in the West and it’s not possible for the ideology to fit so well into the realities of today’s socio-economic system. Therefore, it must need adjustment to be relevant. That is what China has done and to the CCP, the name of the ideology is none issue.
He noted that the CCP was not a perfect system because it is operated by human beings and no human institution is excellent.