Zheng Yongnian, Yang Lijun: Without understanding the modernity of the Chinese Communist Party, it is difficult to understand the modernity of China

by Jung Yong-nien, Lijun Yang [10-24-2025].

Jung Yong-nien: Dean, Institute for Advanced Study in Global and Contemporary China, Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen).

Lijun Yang: Assistant Director, Institute of Public Policy, South China University of Technology.

From October 20 to 23, the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China was held in Beijing. The "Recommendations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development" were reviewed and approved. It has drawn a grand blueprint for the high-quality development of my country's economy and society and pointed out the way forward.

The "Communique of the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China" issued after the meeting mentioned that it is necessary to “adhere to the party's self-revolution to lead the social revolution, persist in promoting comprehensive and strict governance of the party, and enhance the party's political leadership, ideological leadership, mass organization and social appeal, and improve the party's ability and level of leading economic and social development Gather majestic strength to "promote Chinese-style modernization".” Building Chinese-style modernization is inseparable from the leadership of the Communist Party of China. A deep understanding of the party's key role in this process will help to more accurately grasp the direction and development path of Chinese-style modernization.

This article is excerpted from "Chinese Narrative: How to Tell Chinese Stories Well" Due to space constraints, the content of the article has been deleted.

[Text: Zheng Yongnian, Yang Lijun]

The Communist Party of China's “self-revolution” and exploration of modernity

Since the beginning of the reform and opening up, the process of modernization and the acquired modernity in all aspects of China have been discussed at home and abroad. Therefore, even when it comes to the Chinese Communist Party, the topic always revolves around what the Chinese Communist Party has done and how it has promoted social and economic development. For the most part, the modernization and acquired modernity of the Chinese Communist Party itself has been neglected. In practice, it is difficult to understand all other aspects of modernization and modernity without understanding the modernization and modernity of the Chinese Communist Party.

One of the most important facts is this: the Chinese Communist Party is the political subject of China and the only ruling party. The Chinese Communist Party has over 100 million members, and most of the social elite are in the party. Traditionally, the Chinese Communist Party defines itself as “the vanguard”, and “the vanguard” is to play a leadership role. Therefore, when discussing China's modernization, we must first discuss the modernization of the Chinese Communist Party. If these 100 million people are modernized, they can modernize the entire country. If the Chinese Communist Party does not modernize, then there will be no modernization of the country; if the Chinese Communist Party itself cannot modernize, then it will hold back the country's modernization; if the Chinese Communist Party itself first realizes modernization, then it will be able to lead the country's modernization.

Simply put, the modernization of all other aspects of China (including economic, social and cultural aspects) depends on the modernization of politics, that is, the modernization of the Chinese Communist Party as a political subject. We can therefore call the reforms introduced by the Chinese Communist Party as the ruling party the “self-revolution” of the Chinese Communist Party, which, through constant self-revolution, has re-established its modernity. On this basis, it is possible to discuss the modernization of the country and China's contribution to the international community.

From this perspective, to understand the self-revolution since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, we must understand the crisis of political power, especially the crisis of political party governance, that is prevalent in the world today. Without understanding the worldwide power crisis, it is difficult to understand the world significance of the self-revolution carried out by the Chinese Communist Party.

How to explain the modernity of the Chinese Communist Party? This issue calls for placing the Chinese Communist Party in the history and evolution of China's political enlightenment since modern times. As a modern political organization, an organization like the Chinese Communist Party has never been produced in China's history. It is the product of China's modern political enlightenment and sprouted, emerged and developed in the enlightenment movement.

There is a consensus among Chinese and foreign academic circles that the biggest difference between China's traditional political system and the modern political system is that the purpose of the traditional political system is to preserve and maintain the status quo, while the purpose of the modern political system is to transform and progress. The traditional system is not without change, but the goal of change is to maintain the status quo, which is to prevent changes that are “revolutionary”. After the Han dynasty, “deposing hundreds of schools of thought and respecting Confucianism alone”, any factor that could give rise to major political changes was contained ideologically. Confucianism became the sole philosophy of domination, and the core of Confucianism was to maintain domination. The modern German philosopher Hegel believed “China has no history”. Indeed, for thousands of years, from Qin Shi Huang to the late Qing, China had only a change of dynasty, but not a change of basic system. Marx's concept of the “Asiatic mode of production” also coincides with Hegel's. The “ultra-stable structure” of Chinese scholar Jin Guantao and others also means this. One can say either that this is the life force of the traditional political system or that China has been missing structural changes for thousands of years.

The current political system is very different, mainly because the concept of progress has been firmly established in the process of the Enlightenment. There can be progress in society, and progress can be endless. From Sun Yat-sen's revolution to Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang to the Communist revolution, generations of Chinese have pursued change with the same goal of changing China and making progress. In the modern Enlightenment, the most radical criticism and attacks were made on Confucian personal ethics, which had previously maintained the old system. However, although the former ethics are no longer feasible, there is no consensus among the political forces on what the future will be like. What kind of changes does China need? How to pursue change? What is the purpose of change? Various political forces hold different views.

The Communist Party of China chose to pursue the most radical and profound changes, which is the socialist revolution pursued since the founding of the Communist Party of China. It uses revolution to overthrow the old regime, completely transform society, and establish a brand new system. Naturally, this also extends to the various contradictions faced by China today, which are mainly manifested in the contradiction between traditional Confucian philosophy and Marxism-Leninism. The function of the former is to maintain the status quo or adjust itself for survival, while the latter is to pursue Change, and endless change.

After the mid-1990s, the Communist Party of China accelerated its transformation from the original revolutionary party to the ruling party. The direction of this transformation is extremely clear, but people's understanding of the question “what is the ruling party” is not very clear and profound. It can be said that since the beginning of the transition, there has been a process of exploration of this issue, both at the theoretical and the practical level. One thing is quite clear, though, that if a party governs solely for the sake of governing, it must lead to its own decline. This is evident both in the history of the Soviet Union and the communist parties in Eastern Europe in power, and in the historical and real-life experience of those parties in the West today that count the legitimacy of their rule on the basis of votes.

After the reform and opening up, the Chinese Communist Party redefined the party's modernity, that is, to achieve the original goal of the revolution of solving the problem of “general poverty”. However, while redefining modernity, the Chinese Communist Party also strives to retain the “revolutionary nature” of the ruling party. For example, “the four modernizations of cadres” is a good example.“ Four modernizations ” namely revolutionization, youthfulness, knowledge and specialization. Revolutionization comes first, or is it first and foremost, that is, only “revolutionization” can enable the ruling party to achieve modernity while achieving the new mission it has set.

But, because the modernity at the beginning of the reform and opening-up was mainly dictated by the economic modernity of the state, the modernity of the ruling party was inevitably influenced by this economic modernity. In the economic sphere, China quickly developed GDPism. In terms of economic development, GDPism is actually indispensable. China has completely changed the “poor socialist” situation in just a few decades. Before the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012, China had become the world's second largest economy and largest trading country, and its per capita GDP had jumped from less than US$300 in the early 1980s to US$6,000. What is more, China has contributed to the lifting of nearly 700 million people out of absolute poverty. These achievements are regarded by the international community as miracles in the history of the world economy.

However, GDPism also profoundly affects the ruling party itself and the way its party members and cadres behave. Simply put, the ruling party itself is heavily commercialized. In the report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China and the explanation of the revision of the Party Constitution, the Chinese Communist Party has been fully aware of the negative impact of commercialization on the Party as an organization and its individual members.

These phenomena which have emerged within the party are perhaps common to modern business society, or they also have “modernity”, whether people like it or not. But anyway, this is something the Chinese Communist Party as the ruling party must avoid “modernity”. If the ruling party accommodates these “modernities”, goes with the flow and surrenders to them, then its decline becomes inevitable.

Therefore, the Chinese Communist Party needs to define its modernity once again by reaffirming its mission, emphasizing its original intention, reviving its revolutionary character. As stated above, Mao envisioned maintaining the ruling party's modernity by “continuing the revolution”, but his experiment was unsuccessful. The modernity of the country's economy as defined by Deng Xiaoping succeeded, but the ruling party itself had problems. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the ruling party has redefined the party through large-scale anti-corruption campaigns, “removing” the commercial character of political parties, and regulating the behavior of party organizations and party members and cadres by establishing new missions and building new institutional mechanisms. Modernity.

As mentioned earlier, in China, the concept of “political party” was introduced from the West in recent times, but its meaning changed significantly after its introduction. In the West, political parties are tools for campaigning and, in addition, have no other function. In China, political parties are the main body of political action, and action is not just about survival and development, but about leading the country in all its aspects. That is to say, the modernity of political parties is not regulated and defined by the changing environment. On the contrary, the ruling party must take the initiative to regulate its own modernity and pursue and acquire its own modernity through actions. By constantly renewing and prescribing its modernity, the ruling party can keep renewing itself while maintaining a sense of purpose that leads the development of society.

Modernity and the new mission of the political parties

Establishing a new mission for the new era is the key to the Chinese Communist Party's pursuit of modernity. In the era of popular democracy, Western parties acquired their legitimacy primarily through vote counting. That is, society determines the modernity of the ruling party, not the other way around. In the era of "elite democracy", the West also governs through consensus among elites. Ordinary people do not have the right to vote, and decision-making is a matter for elites. But after entering the era of popular democracy “one person, one vote”, the political elite lost its autonomy in decision-making. The logic here is actually quite simple, because votes are given by members of society, and sociality determines the nature of the ruling party. This is the root cause of today's crisis of political parties in the West, which was discussed earlier, which has gone with the flow and the political parties themselves have lost their own direction of development, and the political parties have not only lost their own cohesion and their ability to integrate society, but have instead evolved into political forces that divide society.

In China, the opposite is true. The legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party is acquired and realized by establishing its mission and fulfilling its mission. In other words, the Chinese Communist Party derives its legitimacy from whether it can deliver on the promises it has made to society. The logic here is also clear, namely that the ruling party must not only have a mission, but also be capable of achieving it.

Therefore, in every major period, the leadership of the ruling party needs to make a basic judgment on the current state of socio-economic development and then establish its new mission on top of this judgment. The most important topic of all the National Congresses of the Communist Party of China is to answer “where does it come from?”“ Where now?”“ Where's the future?” These questions. The same goes for the 18th and 19th National Congresses of the Chinese Communist Party. Answering these three questions requires a basic judgment, and this basic judgment is most important for the ruling party to establish its new mission. Only with this basic judgement can the Chinese Communist Party determine its new mission and future direction of development. With these, there will be concrete courses of action, which will then manifest themselves in the form of policies.

In 1949, the Communist Party of China led by Mao Zedong completed the most arduous task in modern times, the establishment of New China. In the 30 years after the founding of the People's Republic of China, a basic national political system was established. Although all aspects of the Chinese system changed after the reform and opening up, the basic institutional structure was established during the Mao Zedong era. Of course, this basic set of political systems still needs to be improved and improved in the new era. After entering a new period of reform and opening up, in 1987, the 13th National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed the party's basic line in the primary stage of socialism, which was also a basic judgment. In 1992, Deng Xiaoping proposed the concept of “socialist market economy” after the “Southern Talks”, which was also an important part of Deng Xiaoping Theory. At the 14th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the Communist Party of China once again emphasized that “one center, two basic points” this party's basic line must be managed for a hundred years and cannot be shaken.

New era, new judgment, new mission. Today, China has reached another new era. “New Era” is not just a term, it is a new basic judgment made by the Communist Party of China based on the reality that China's socio-economic development level has reached a certain stage, but the development is still unbalanced and inadequate. The report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China pointed out that socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era, and the main contradiction in Chinese society has been transformed into a contradiction between the people's growing needs for a better life and unbalanced and inadequate development. At the same time, the changes in the main contradictions in Chinese society have not changed the Chinese Communist Party's judgment of the historical stage of Chinese socialism. China's basic national conditions, which are still in the primary stage of socialism and will remain in the primary stage of socialism for a long time, have not changed. China is the world's largest developing country. The international status of the country has not changed.

Despite China's great achievements since its reform and opening up, the ruling party has also seen its own times and its internal and external environment. Socialism can't be done “beating gongs and drums”. The leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has a very clear mind and, on the basis of fully affirming its achievements, faces up to the challenges and looks to the future, thinking and judging very seriously and calmly the problems it faces. This is also an important background for the concerns of the ruling party “two hundred years” since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.

At the beginning of reform and opening up, Deng Xiaoping planned a “three-step” strategy for China's modernization development. As a first step, from 1981 to 1990, the gross national product will be doubled to solve the problem of people's food and clothing. This was largely achieved by the end of the 1980s. As a second step, from 1991 to the end of the 20th century, the gross national product quadrupled compared with 1980, and people's lives reached a moderately prosperous level. In the third step, by the middle of the 21st century, the per capita gross national product will have reached the level of the moderately developed countries and will have been largely modernized. Deng emphasized that China would achieve democracy and prosperity by the middle of the next century, which would be the middle of the 21st century. Since then, due to China's accelerated development, the central leadership collective with Jiang Zemin as the core has revised the plan for the 1980s, proposing to build a moderately prosperous society in all respects by 2021, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China These “two centenary” plans are to build a prosperous, democratic, civilized and harmonious modern socialist country by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.

The report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China also depicts a blueprint for the future: from the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2017 to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2022, it is a historical intersection of “two centenary” goals. In the report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, two more stages of specific planning were made for the modernization goals in the 30 years from 2020 to 2050: the first stage will start from 2020, and on the basis of building a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way, we will strive for another 15 years, basically realize socialist modernization; and the second stage, from 2035 to the middle of the 21st century, on the basis of basically realizing modernization, We will strive for another 15 years to build China into a prosperous, democratic, civilized, harmonious and beautiful modern socialist country. This new “two-step” plan, which will last for 30 years, is the strategic arrangement for the development of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era.

It should be said that this blueprint is depicted on the basis of the basic judgments set out above. Judging by policy discussions over the years, China's focus has shifted from how to avoid falling into the middle-income trap to how to elevate the country to a high-income economy, a wealthy society. According to preliminary calculations, China's per capita GDP has exceeded US$12,000 in 2021.

However, if China is to move from middle-income to a high-income economy, the difficulties are obvious. In East Asia, up to now, only five economies have been able to escape the middle-income trap and enter high-income levels, namely Japan and Asia “the Four Tigers” (South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan, China). These five economies have special historical conditions for being able to become high-income economies. Firstly, in the period of growth of these economies, the world's (mainly Western) economies were in a period of rapid upswing, and they all belonged to Western-style economies, to which the West “careful”, at least, did not place too great a barrier to market entry. Secondly, these economies are relatively small. Again, the governments of these economies can form effective economic policies or industrial policies and become what the academic community calls “developmental governments”.

But the situation in China today is very different. For one, China's economy is huge. Japan is the third largest economy in the world, but today China's economy is more than twice the size of Japan. Secondly, the world economic situation is not positive. The West has so far not completely emerged from the shadow it has had since the 2008 world financial crisis. Looking at the current state of the Western economy, it will still take a long time to return to normal growth. Because of the high degree of integration between China and the world economy, China's internal development is bound to be subject to the general world economic situation. Third, there are often conflicts between China and the US Western economies over various factors (such as the West's so-called national security, ideology and political system), and the West is not happy to fully open its market to China. So how does China-U.S. relations develop? Is there going to be a war between the first and second largest economies? Will the two countries not end up in a Cold War state? These are matters of great concern to people.

But, compared to these five economies, China also has its own advantages. China is a continental economy with great potential for internal development. Formerly Japanese economists proposed the “Anseriform Model” of East Asian economic development, which talks about how East Asia can take off economically starting with Japan and then expand to other economies. Japan was the first economy in Asia to modernize and take off economically, after which some industries with low value added began to move to other economies as Japan's internal labor costs increased, among other things, while Japan itself shifted to industries with high value added. Asia “Four Tigers” took off economically after Japan. After that, economic modernization spread to Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and other countries.

China is a latecomer. However, China itself constitutes a “Anser-shaped model”. To this day, only the eastern coastal region has largely modernized its economy, the central part is taking off, and the western part is still to be developed. As far as technology is concerned, even though the external environment is unclear, after more than four decades of development, China's technology has also accumulated to a point where it can take off. Overall, China is still a middle-income country with many poor people, and these point to a huge space for China's future development. At the same time, externally, China is also vigorously developing the international economy and exploring international markets through strategies including the “Belt and Road” Initiative. In other words, China has the potential to escape the middle-income trap and promote itself as a high-income economy in the coming phase. This is also the rationale behind China's recent “dual-cycle” strategy.

More importantly, as Chinese society meets the requirements of food and clothing and generally achieves a well-off society, other needs, such as the need for a better environment, social fairness and justice, political participation, etc., are also increasing day by day, thus showing an imbalance in the development of China's economy and society, economy and environment, or material civilization and spiritual civilization. This imbalance can be both a problem and a driving force for progress. Therefore, the report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed “to better promote the all-round development of people and the all-round progress of society”.

There is a precondition here, though, and that is that there is an effective government. Without an effective government, it is difficult to realize all these potentials. And "the mission of the Communist Party of China can ensure the existence of an effective government".