China's ruling party's 'longer march'

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 many civil servants, academics, students, artisans, traders, researchers or technocrats are members of the CCP, even many journalists. Another complexity of the CCP is its collectives of leadership. As many other countries have a leader at a time, China in the past takes a team of leaders along per time. It is most interesting to find that while Deng Xiaoping was never the president of China, head of government, general secretary of the Communist Party, he overshadowed others who were in power as the supreme leader of China. That is the CCP model.

At the last week of April, I had an audience 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 have 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 admitted that the CCP is not a perfect system because it is operated by human beings and no human institution is.

That conclusion is my concern. It is good that the leadership of the party is going tough on the members that dent the image of the party.

This has to be sustained if the CCP is to remain relevant to China and the world.

The party should not take light the influence of today's open world where the ICT has made communication and information dissemination the biggest world issue. No part of the world is any longer isolated, otherwise I would have no reason to write this as a Nigerian journalist. The world watches CCP today more than before. It needs to tap into the benefits of this rave and make itself more open and stronger. It's tasking to run a party of over 85 million members, managing the largest polity in the world and the second largest economy. But the size of CCP's jurisdiction is also a benefit it should put to positive use.

My interest is that since the CCP provides the world with a good alternative in political management of societies, it should remain alive and relevant in the years ahead and play its role better in adapting to the changing times for good.

Ikenna Emewu, senior editor of The Sun Newspaper, Nigeria, is a Fellow of the CPDA and of the CAPC, Beijing (ikeroyalemewu@yahoo.com)