China has political parties? Whooda thunkit...

I was going to post this amusing bit of Chinese politics Tuesday night, but it got late and NCIS was on, so bbbbbump to Thursday.  It started out with an article on Xinhua that began like this:

No!  That's amusing, but not where it starts...

BEIJING, March 6 (Xinhua) -- To name China's eight non-communist parties is quite challenging for many foreigners, let alone understand the differences between them.

A chance was offered Tuesday as the parties' leaders came to a press conference to introduce how their organizations have effectively participated in China's system of multiparty cooperation and political consultation, and made contributions to the modernization drive of the country.

Yes, believe it or not, China has 8 "non-Communist" parties.  Some of them were quite non-communist in the past, others not so much.  As for "effective participation", well, they are combined just over a million members- about 1.22% the size of the China Communist Party.  To be fair, they get more than that share of seats in "Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the top political advisory body".  And there ARE some differences- while the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is considered "far left", the 8 dwarves contain 5 "left wing" and 3 "center left" parties.


Wiki lists 19 separate "ideologies" that these 9 parties may or may not follow- and I'm not really sure how much differentiation there really is (he said, tongue in cheek).  One ideology that ALL of them adhere to is called "Socialism with a Chinese character."  This actually lumps in 4 of the other categories (officially) and amounts to "Marxist-Leninism the Chinese way."  And its emphasis on Sino-Centrism ( a fancy way of saying 'China first') lumps in 4 of the other categories- which means we now have 9 of the 19 categories in common.  Not as diverse as we might have first thought, eh?


Out of those 9 categories, we also have "Xi Jinping thought" (the current major domo of China), "Mao Zedoung thought" (which is basically the same as yet another category- "new democracy"- and that makes it now 10 common ideologies), "Deng Xioping theory" (basically watered down Maoism for a non-revolutionary age), along with analogs patriotism, "Chinese" and "left-wing" nationalism, and Chinese unification.  We also have Sun Yat-Sen's "Three Principles of the People"- Nationalism, Democracy, and the Livelihood of the people (which is basically another part of "Socialism with Chinses Character")  In other words, while some of them started at different spots, they all are pretty much rowing the same direction- with the possible exception of The Taiwan Democratic Self-Government League, which consists of Taiwanese who got drove off the island for being too far left but still advocate for an autonomous Taiwan in a united China.  Because that same deal with Hong Kong is working out SOO well.

A quick bio of the other 7 dwarves-

-The Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang (RCCK)- this is a group that leaned a bit to the left, enough that they split with Chiang Kai-Shek in '48, before they got booted to Taiwan.

NO, I said "Shek", not "Shrek".

- China Democratic League- originally trying to be a "third way" in the midst of the civil war AND the war against Japan; it got infiltrated by Communists and anyone with a legit thought process left in the early '50s.

- China National Democratic Construction Association - an offshoot of the old CDL, it is mainly "patriotic entrepeneurs", where most of the culture and science elite stayed with the CDL.

- The China Association for Promoting Democracy (CAPD)- More eggheads, heavy in the publishing game.

- The Chinese Peasants and Workers Democratic Party (CPWDP), which despite the "workers" part, is another set of intellectuals, involved in the medical, population, and ecological fields.

- The China Zhi Gong Party, which are guys who fled the first revolution in the '20s and spent the revolution of the '40s in the US and other countries.  They were originally another "third way" group.

- And The Jiusan Society, yet another bunch of eggheads.  I think their intellectuals are just cliquey.

But now that I have you completely bored (and likely have given Jo-Anne a headache), let me give you the cherry on the cake- the reason WHY the CCP allows them and their CCPPC to exist:

President Xi Jinping shared his understanding of China's party system while attending a joint panel discussion with political advisors on Sunday.

The system of multiparty cooperation and political consultation led by the CPC is "a new type of party system growing from China's soil," said Xi, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission.

The Chinese system is new, because it unites all political parties and people without party affiliation toward a common goal, effectively preventing the flaws of the absence of oversight in one-party rule, or power rotation and nasty competition among multiple political parties, according to Xi.


Translation:  By letting them have an illusion of legitimacy, but making them all join the umbrella CCPPC group, the CCP can watch them a lot more closely and keep them from getting out of line.


I think at last I see why the American left like the Chinese so much...