ipl-logo

China's Communist Rulers: Summary

530 Words3 Pages

Richard McGregor, an Australian who spent nine years in Beijing the capital of China as bureau chief and as a correspondent for the Financial Times, has written a historic novel about the Chinese Communist Party’s influence over Chinese society. The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers, first published in Britain in 2010, is an assembly of stories and hypothesis about the Chinese system which McGregor composed after his years in China. This book provides the best explanation of China’s government and the Party today while being easily understood by a foreigner. Many examples are provided based on the USA and Taiwan as well as British government that assist the reader in further understanding China’s policies. Additionally, …show more content…

The current government has improved in the years of reform since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. The party today is less involved in the private lives of Chinese citizens. The author does a great job explaining the extent of the parties power and how its complete control over the state-owned enterprises as well as people made modernization possible in China. On the other hand, corruption is one of the major challenges the one-party government faces today. The party's absolute control over all of the major valves of the economy and society made it is extremely hard to eliminate the abuse of power within the party. Richard McGregor discusses that the reasons for corruption and overwhelming deception are the government’s inability to think through the consequences well. In fact, the system discourages the leadership to weigh in and elaborate on their plans. Instead, party officials are encouraged to hit their KPIs (key performance indicators), then move on to their next job. For example, the author describes in great detail how the local politicians in Shanghai got ahead of themselves in regard to Beijing construction business and were eventually brought down in one of the most public corruption cases in China’s history. This internal competition and growth at all costs may cause a very significant economic bubble. There is an emerging view that much of the reported growth and development has been funded by off-balance sheet entities such as trusts and that China’s Government Debt to GDP ratio is dramatically higher than it is publicly

Open Document