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The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers and Their Impact on Society and Economy



The Party is Financial Times reporter Richard McGregor's eye-opening investigation into China's Communist Party, and the integral role it has played in the country's rise as a global superpower and rival to the United States. Many books have examined China's economic rise, human rights record, turbulent history, and relations with the US; none until now, however, have tackled the issue central to understanding all of these issues: how the ruling communist government works. The Party delves deeply into China's secretive political machine.


Richard McGregor's The Party has been established as the book on China and its political leadership. It is indispensable to understanding what may soon become the most powerful country on earth, and here is it is newly updated to include material on the once-in-a-decade leadership changes taking place in November 2012.Newly updated version including analysis of the once-in-a-decade leadership changes taking place in November 2012China's Communist Party is the largest, most powerful political machine in the world. Here, Richard McGregor delves deeply into its inner sanctum, revealing how this secretive cabal keeps control of every aspect of the country - its military and media, legal system and businesses, even its religious organizations. How has the Party merged Marx, Mao and the market to create a global superpower? And what does this mean for the world?'Extraordinary', Sunday Times'Masterful ... entertaining and insightful', Economist'Superb ... an essential, riveting guide to how the rising power really works', Jonathan Fenby'If you read only one book about China this year, it should be this one. And if you do not read this book, you probably do not understand China today', Arthur Kroeber, China Economic Quarterly'A compelling exploration of the world's largest and most successful political machine', New Statesman'A book that is as informative as it is entertaining ... China has been transformed. The system that takes the credit is brilliantly described by McGregor', Chris Patten, Financial TimesHaving joined the Financial Timesin 2000 in Shanghai and being appointed China bureau chief in 2005, Richard McGregor is now Washington Bureau Chief for the FT. McGregor has won numerous awards throughout his nearly two decades of reporting from north Asia, including a 2010 Society of Publishers in Asia Editorial Excellence Award for his coverage on the Xinjiang Riots and 2008 SOPA Awards for Editorial Intelligence. He has spent twenty years in north Asia, starting in Taiwan, and then in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Beijing, where he established offices for The Australian newspaper. He has also contributed articles and reports to the BBC, the International Herald Tribune and the Far Eastern Economic Review.




The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers




China's political and economic growth in the past three decades is one of astonishing, epochal dimensions. The country has undergone a remarkable transformation on a scale similar to that of the Industrial Revolution in the West. The most remarkable part of this transformation, however, has been left largely untold—the central role of the Chinese Communist Party. As an organization alone, the Party is a phenomenon of unique scale and power. Its membership surpasses seventy-three million, and it does more than just rule a country. The Party not only has a grip on every aspect of government, from the largest, richest cities to the smallest far-flung villages in Tibet and Xinjiang, it also has a hold on all official religions, the media, and the military. The Party presides over large, wealthy state-owned businesses, and it exercises control over the selection of senior executives of all government companies, many of which are in the top tier of the Fortune 500 list.In The Party, Richard McGregor delves deeply into China's inner sanctum for the first time, showing how the Communist Party controls the government, courts, media, and military, and how it keeps all corruption accusations against its members in-house. The Party's decisions have a global impact, yet the CPC remains a deeply secretive body, hostile to the law, unaccountable to anyone or anything other than its own internal tribunals. It is the world's only geopolitical rival of the United States, and is steadfastly poised to think the worst of the West. In this provocative and illuminating account, Richard McGregor offers a captivating portrait of China's Communist Party, its grip on power and control over China, and its future.


But McGregor points out that "Lenin, who designed the prototype used to run communist countries around the world, would recognize the (Chinese) model immediately." Case in point: the Central Organization Department, the party's vast and opaque human resources agency. It has no public phone number, and there is no sign on the building it occupies near Tiananmen Square. Guardian of the party's personnel files, the department handles key personnel decisions not only in the government but also in business, media, the judiciary and even academia.


The Chinese Communist Party's great success, despite the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and across Eastern Europe, has obliterated Western wishful thinking about the "end of history" and the world's inexorable march toward liberal democracy. "The Chinese communist system is, in many ways, rotten, costly, corrupt and often dysfunctional," McGregor observes. "But the system has also proved to be flexible and protean enough to absorb everything that has been thrown at it, to the surprise and horror of many in the west."


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