While there are a tiny minority of some 3,000 senior party apparatchiks, there are around 90 million members of the CCP, according to estimates.
Party members are Chinese people, after all, not some separate species.” The most prudent thing one can say about the relationship between the two is that they are very complex.”Īnd he added, “And if you want to start deploying language like ‘evil’ about the Party, then you are going to have to start labeling a good number of Chinese people that way too. He went on, “The Party deliberately sets out to integrate and reach deep into society. A great number of China’s most famous and coherent dissidents were once party members, too.Īs Kerry Brown, professor of Chinese studies and director of the Lau China Institute, noted in an article for Oxford Political Review back in April, “for the great supporters of a neat division between Party and population, the thorny issue is that the Party is part of society, and its members are, unsurprisingly, more often than not typical Chinese people.” He was no doubt someone Rogin had in mind when he wrote about the “heroes in this story.” Yet he was a member of the CCP since university. Take Li Wenliang, the late Wuhan doctor and “whistleblower” who is now regarded as something of a “dissident” by some in the West because of his revealing of information about the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 before his death in early February.
Often that group is instead held up as perfect and infallible, though without responsibilitfor their actions. Moreover, when trying to defend a group from racism, one walks a fine line between defense and patronizing. Having lived in or reported from many authoritarian countries, I know the notion that there is a neat division between the ruling party and everyone else in society is enticing. But the “CCP bad, Chinese good” sentiment appears common. One cannot be sure how pervasive such a view is. “The Chinese are also victims of their own government’s draconian measures, which caused massive extra suffering.” In short, he concluded, “Our beef is not with the Chinese people. Chinese doctors, researchers and journalists risked their lives and even died fighting the virus and warning the d. “The Chinese people are heroes in this story.
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