Cadre Country: How China became the Chinese Communist Party

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Since the founding of the Communist Party in China just over a century ago, there is much the country has achieved. But who does the heavy lifting in China? And who walks away with the spoils? Cadre Country places the spotlight on the nation's 40 million cadres – the managers and government officials employed by the ruling Communist Party to protect its great enterprise. This group has captured the culture and wealth of China, excluding the voices of the common citizens of this powerful and diverse country. In October 2022, at the 20 th Communist Party Congress, China’s President Xi Jinping cemented his power to win a third term of leadership and become the most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. To understand the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), its political organisation, and how it has maintained its grip on power, China historian John Fitzgerald’s 2022 book Cadre Country is a great place to start. Award-winning historian John Fitzgerald focuses on the stories the Communist Party tells about itself, exploring how China works as an authoritarian state, and revealing Beijing’s monumental propaganda productions as a fragile edifice built on questionable assumptions.

what this means for people in China and those of us outside. The ongoing assault on the legal profession is not simply an arbitrary exerciseOn the Leninist model of state organisation, ideology and organisation (including economic organisation) are supposed to match up.

employed off-budget in shiye danwei service units, while just over onehalf occupy established positions, divided between fourteen million inJohn Fitzgerald is an Emeritus Professor at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. He served for five years as China Representative of The Ford Foundation in Beijing (2008-2013) before heading the Asia-Pacific philanthropy studies program at Swinburne University. His books include Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia, awarded the Ernest Scott Prize of the Australian Historical Association, and Awakening China: Politics, Culture and Class in the Nationalist Revolution, awarded the Joseph Levenson Prize of the US Association for Asian Studies. His latest book is Cadre Country: How China became the Chinese Communist Party (2022). Since the founding of the Communist Party in China just over a century ago, there is much the country has achieved. But who does the heavy lifting in China? And who walks away with the spoils? Cadre Country places the spotlight on the nation’s 40 million cadres – the managers and government officials employed by the ruling Communist Party to protect its great enterprise. This group has captured the culture and wealth of China, excluding the voices of the common citizens of this powerful and diverse country. Dong Wang is distinguished professor of history and director of the Wellington Koo Institute for Modern China in World History at Shanghai University (since 2016), a member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and an elected Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland.

implement the three represents’ might make some sense in partyspeak Mandarin but it does not translate well into any other language,sits at the peak and centre of the matrix. The party is the key to the partystate organisation. It substitutes for the People (renmin) in relation to Since the founding of the Communist Party in China just over a century ago, there is much the country has achieved. But who does the heavy lifting in China? And who walks away with the spoils? Cadre Country places the spotlight on the nation's 40 million cadres - the managers and government officials employed by the ruling Communist Party to protect its great enterprise. This group has captured the culture and wealth of China, excluding the voices of the common citizens of this powerful and diverse country.

smothering popular expressions of sympathy and public offers of assistance under a barrage of official propaganda, and channelling charitable Fundamentally, Cadre Country seeks to scrutinise the CCP, its political organisation, and its key claims, including the centrality of the Party to China’s political stability, culture, economic growth, and that foreigners wary of China are ignorant or prejudiced. For example, he rejects the claim of the CCP and its advocates that the alleviation of poverty since the 1980s is due to the CCP’s reforms. Rather, he makes the case that it was due to the CCP finally loosening its grip over the Chinese people. The Party justifies its rule by emphasising how its leaders are selected on merit (and are thus responsible for economic expertise) rather than by democratic election (which the CCP sees as dangerous). Fitzgerald critiques this narrative as simply a way for the Party to entrench its system of political exclusion. the English name ‘China Non-Profit Center’ appeared the Chineselanguage title Non-Profit Centre Network (Feiyinglizuzhi zhongxinwang). The word ‘China’ was left out of the Chinese translation, which of the party’s latest in-house language. This is a consistent moneyearner for cadre trainers as official party phrases are designed with Award-winning historian John Fitzgerald focuses on the stories the Communist Party tells about itself, exploring how China works as an authoritarian state and revealing Beijing's monumental propaganda productions as a fragile edifice built on questionable assumptions.

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Award-winning historian John Fitzgerald focuses on the stories the Communist Party tells about itself, exploring how China works as an authoritarian state, and revealing Beijing's monumental propaganda productions as a fragile edifice built on questionable assumptions. It takes decades of patient observation, experience and study of China to produce a book like this. Cadre Country is a must read for specialists and the general public.’ – Anita Chan, Australian National University