Friday, July 14, 2000
SCMP
Capitalists infiltrating party, article warns
JASPER BECKER
Too many private businessmen are joining the Communist Party, an article in the
party's monthly ideological magazine, Zhongliu, has warned.
In some coastal areas, half of the new members in small towns and rural
districts were private business owners, it complained.
By July 1998, Qinghui county outside Shanghai had 158 capitalists in the local
party. Of the county's 52 party cells, 36 were run by private businessmen. In
three cities in Jiangsu province, 40 per cent of private business owners, 858
people, had applied to join the local branch. "If we do not take stern measures
there will be more and more capitalist bosses who are party branch secretaries,"
the article's author, Liu Changfa, warns.
One of the first acts of now President Jiang Zemin when he was appointed party
secretary in 1989 was to issue an edict purging capitalists from the party - the
vanguard of the working class - and to stipulate that they could not be admitted
in the future.
The article argues the relationship between private business and the working
class is the relationship between exploiters and the exploited so private
businessmen are not entitled to be enrolled in the party.
"They control the means of production and hire workers," it said. "They take
profits from the output of the workers as their own." The goals of private
business are the opposite of what the party is fighting for, the realisation of
communism is the abolition of private property, it argued.
"Private businessmen cannot accept the party's principles and policies. If they
do, then they are rejecting themselves," it said. "They only want to join the
party to influence the adoption and implementation of local policies. They hope
to enrol more private businessmen into the party to strengthen their own role."
The article does not explicitly say that party membership is now up for sale but
complains that local branches which are strapped for cash are tempted to enlist
private businessmen to raise funds and help stimulate the growth of the local
economy.
"Now there is trend to encourage them to join," the article said. "Business
owners sometimes appear to resign and give control of their business to
relatives but they still control their independent kingdom. They wear communist
caps on their head but inside they have the brains of capitalists."
