by Robert Lawrence Kuhn

The 105th founding anniversary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) prompts reflection. I start with the indisputable fact of China's developmental miracle. Over my 37 years following China closely, both as a participant and observer, I have considered 12 principles, historically and retrospectively, that have brought about this miracle.

A people who work long and hard to improve the lives of their families and the destiny of their country.

Prioritizing economic and social advancement over ideological rigidity.

The system of CPC-led multiparty cooperation and political consultation that requires political stability and encourages economic growth and social enhancement.

Clear administrative organization: central government and five levels of local government -- provincial, municipal, county, township, and village -- enabling clear implementation of policies.

Selecting, educating, training, monitoring, and inspecting key personnel, inculcating a high degree of administrative and managerial professionalism.

The CPC solicits and respects expert opinion, both within and outside the Party, as exemplified by the increasing influence and social role of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

The CPC solicits and respects public opinion.

The CPC sets long-term goals, mid-term objectives, and short-term policies that are continuously monitored and modified; policies that require long-term commitment receive long-term commitment.

The CPC experiments and tests policies before implementing and rolling them out, as seen in the original special economic zones that catalyzed reform and opening up, and the more recent pilot free trade zones.

The CPC uses five-year plans, leveraging industrial planning and state capital to achieve economies of scale and competitive advantage.

The CPC provides checks and balances via internal debate and relentless anti-corruption drives.

The CPC is willing to admit and correct errors.

To understand the CPC, the first thing to understand is that it is not a political party in the Western sense, where political parties represent only certain groups of voters and are time-bound by election cycles.

The CPC does not compete for power with other political parties.

To understand the CPC, I suggest an eight-dimensional framework: ideology and its developments; history and its legacies; leadership and politics; structure and organization; personnel selection and training; discipline and anti-corruption; contemporary challenges; and future prospects.

The CPC is constituted by a dedicated cadre from all sectors of society: about 7 percent of the population, tasked to represent the whole Chinese population. Although originally a party of peasants, workers and soldiers, today over 50 percent of CPC members have degrees above junior college (rising steadily to 57.6 percent at the end of 2024).

Moreover, the CPC actually implements policy; it runs things, which is very different from Western political parties, which do not run anything, but rather exercise power via appointing party members to government positions. The CPC's leadership is the defining feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

It is also said that because the CPC does not have the recurring burden of elections and making campaign promises to diverse groups, it can maintain a long-term strategic focus and oversee policy implementation through its hierarchical structure, often compared to those of a corporation or the military.

For example, during China's historic poverty alleviation campaign, which I observed firsthand, five levels of CPC local organization, each led by a Party committee and a Party secretary, coordinated efforts to eliminate extreme poverty. Guided by overarching directives from the Party's central leadership, Party committees and secretaries at the provincial, municipal, county, township and village levels each played distinct roles.

To simplify, provincial secretaries set overall goals and tasks and monitored outcomes; municipal secretaries developed and supervised annual plans, guided county-level implementation and oversaw results; county secretaries acted as "front-line commanders," including overseeing the allocation of funds; township secretaries implemented key tasks on the ground, systematically visiting villages and households for assessment; and village secretaries worked directly with poor households on a regular basis.

For the poverty alleviation campaign, Party secretaries at all five levels signed responsibility agreements.

The CPC has always had a people-centered philosophy as its foundation. While all countries advocate helping their people, in China, one can trace the people-centered philosophy directly to specific policy initiatives.

Consider the anti-poverty campaign, which eradicated extreme poverty in 2020, and the "Common Prosperity" initiative, which gained prominence in early 2021, as guiding principles aimed at addressing the economically divisive side effects of rapid development. A key component of "Common Prosperity" is rural revitalization, which seeks to narrow the gap in living standards between rural and urban areas.

"Party building" is a primary task. While always stressed, it was elevated to a high level of strategic and theoretical importance by the recent establishment of "Xi Jinping Thought on Party Building," which is now an integral component of the overarching "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era," along with the six prior components: Xi Jinping Thought on Economy, Xi Jinping Thought on the Rule of Law, Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization, Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy, Xi Jinping Thought on Strengthening the Military, and Xi Jinping Thought on Culture.

Labeled a "milestone," Xi Jinping Thought on Party Building states that the CPC's leadership is the defining feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics; that the centralized, unified leadership of the CPC Central Committee must be upheld; and that Party self-governance must be advanced without wavering.

Party self-governance is the action item, achieved via the Party's self-renewal. This is exemplified by the CPC's relentless anti-corruption campaign, which continues unabated. Fighting corruption, extravagance, and abuses of power actualizes the Party's self-governance -- with the CPC weaving institutional building into every facet of the unrelenting fight against corruption.

From my observations, one "secret" of the CPC is the professionalism of officials, which is not limited to senior leaders. High-quality public management is pervasive. The CPC Central Committee's Organization Department is responsible for selecting, training, monitoring, assessing, and promoting Party and government officials -- and, when necessary, demoting or firing them. The process is rigorous, quantitative and continuous.

Training is intense and career-long. Senior officials go to the central Party school for mid-career learning, which can last up to three months, studying market economics and business management as well as Marxist theory.

CPC rules on work style and personal conduct have become stricter. The Eight Rules of the Party Central Committee reject extravagance and reduce ceremonial visits, meetings and "empty talk." A training campaign emphasizes strict standards in morality, power and self-discipline, as well as integrity in decision-making, official conduct and personal behavior. Over more than 35 years of engaging with Chinese officials at all levels, I have generally found them to be among the most competent administrators anywhere.

My friends in China ask me why some in the world misunderstand the CPC. The problem, I explain, is partly semantics -- because, as noted, the English word "party" connotes, in election-based political systems, a political party that competes in multi-party elections, such that when a ruling party does not compete in multi-party elections, that political system is deemed undemocratic.

This portrayal misrepresents the Chinese system, which is founded on a different principle. In the Chinese system, the Party is the ruling organization, not a competing political party. For this reason, the CPC has a higher and broader obligation to enhance the living standards and well-being of all Chinese citizens. This includes advancing reforms, strengthening the rule of law, improving transparency in governance, expanding public participation in governance, and promoting democracy, as well as various rights and freedoms.

All political parties, all political systems, have trade-offs, and while achieving national objectives is indeed an advantage of China's Party-led system, it is not the only criterion for evaluating systems. That's why Chinese President Xi Jinping calls for continuing reform, opening-up, rule of law, system improvement, and Party self-renewal.

I do not claim that China's path has always been straight; nor do I overlook the detours, including some traumatic ones, but the results today are unambiguously positive for the Chinese people, including those 850 million people who have been brought out of abject poverty.

Moreover, notwithstanding China's historical success, China's future development cannot simply emulate or extrapolate the past. As we say in the finance industry, "past performance does not guarantee future results." That's why President Xi also calls for prioritizing Chinese modernization through high-quality development, which is energized by new quality productive forces, especially in science and technology.

The CPC claims a historic mission. As the ruling party, it must continually assess and adjust. This is its strength. Conditions change, and so must policies. Only through such real-world grounding -- continuously monitored and modified -- can the CPC build a fully modernized country.

In 1,000 years, when the long annals of political systems are compiled, China today may well serve as a case study of what happens when a non-Western political system without multi-party elections seeks to build a country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious, and beautiful.

Editor's note: Robert Lawrence Kuhn is chairman of The Kuhn Foundation, creator/host of Closer to Truth, a nonprofit digital-media and TV series on science and philosophy, creator/editor of the Landscape of Consciousness, and a recipient of the China Reform Friendship Medal.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Xinhua News Agency.