By Jørgen Delman, professor, China Studies, University of Copenhagen
The Communist Party of China (CPC) is the world’s largest political party with more than 80 million members. It has been in power for 65 years and has been successful in turning the fate of China. Yet many of its top leaders believe that it is facing a severe crisis due to its embrace of corruption and since many of its leaders have lost sight of its fundamental social obligations in their pursuit of personal privilege and wealth.
The incumbent leader of the CPC, Xi Jinping, has shown determination to swing the whip over the ailing Party from the time he rose to power in 2012. He has first-rate political credentials to do so. His father, Xi Zhongxun, was a first-generation communist guerrilla leader who made it to the top under the People’s Republic of China. He was persecuted as head of an anti-Party clique from the early 1960s and stigmatized throughout the Cultural Revolution. He returned to the political scene as one of Deng Xiaoping’s close allies in 1978 and was appointed Party leader in Guangdong in South China. With the endorsement of Deng, he became the father and founder of one of the most successful engines of China’s modern growth miracle, the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone.
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