Chinese Communist Party announced plan to tighten grip over private sector
CPC issued guidelines to strengthens the united front work involving private sector
In a major
development, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has announced a plan to tighten
its grip on the private sector. According to the Chinese news agency Xinhua
news, the General Office of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central
Committee has issued a set of guidelines for strengthening united front work
involving the private sector.
The statement
said that the Party's united front work concerning the private economy has been
breaking new ground and innovating since the reform and opening up, however,
the united front work is faced with new situations and new tasks because the
scale of the private sector has been expanding, risks and challenges have
increased significantly, and the values and interests of the private economy
personnel have become more diverse as socialism with Chinese characteristics
has entered a new era.
Strengthening
the united front work with the private sector is an important way to realize
the Party's leadership over the private economy, an important content to
develop and improve the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and
an important guarantee to promote high-quality development of the private
economy, it read.
The Central
Committee document stressed efforts to strengthen political thinking guidance
of personnel in the private sector, train competent representative figures of
the sector, and support and serve the sector's high-quality development.
Mechanisms
for communication and consultation between government and businesses should be
established and improved, it said, urging measures to give full play to the
role of federations of industry and commerce and chambers of commerce and strengthen
the Party's leadership over the united front work with the private sector.
What is United Front Work?
The united
front is a department in the Communist Party. It is an umbrella organisation
designed to increase the influence of the Communist Party both inside China and
outside. This decision may be new, but the practice is old. China's private
sector has been under siege for some time now.
Xi Jinping
has pushed for something called "comprehensive party building" in the
private sector. It means setting up party cells in private enterprises. The
rules have been in place since the early 2000s and by 2016, 68 per cent of
China's non-state enterprises had set up party cells.
In 2017, a
trade group in Germany raised red flags. It said foreign firms may pull out of
China over Communist Party pressure but China hasn't relented, now, it is
making fresh moves to control the private sector.
A party cell
is China's way of co-opting the private sector; one can expect these cells to
now closely work with the united front.
The neoliberal
economists criticise Chinese leadership for keeping the blurred line between
private and publicly owned economy. The capitalist class will see this move as
an attempt to further tightening the grip of Party and state over the economy.
Even though,
it is not a correct description of Chinese economic system, however it reflects
the sentiments of pro-market business people. Private sector and market economy
never dominated the Chinese economy. The economy is already dominated by public
sector. China is not capitalist country. State through the bureaucratic public planning
controls the economy.
It is a clear
move to deeply integrate the Communist Party into China's boardrooms.
IT is good move
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