On September 27, Chinese President
Xi Jinping convened a meeting of the Communist Party of China's political bureau, the country’s top
decision-making organ.
At the meeting, CPC top guns
stressed that people’s basic living
needs must be met.
This is according to reports by Chinese press outlets, including Xinhua News Agency. The political bureau resolved that priority should be given to the employment of fresh college graduates.
It stressed that migrant workers, those lifted out of poverty, and zero-employment families should be given priority, too. The meeting also stressed that low-income earners, elderly persons, persons with disabilities, and the jobless should be supported with state aid.
President Xi and the CPC's top guns also directed efforts to stabilise the prices of essential goods such as food, water, electricity, gas, and heating.
Theey also directed that party stalwarts promote agricultural production, increase income of rural residents and safeguard food security.
From the meeting, the direction was one: that all regions and departments earnestly implement the decisions and arrangements. Central to the call was that everyone get down to work, united as one “to promote sound and steady economic growth”.
CPC members and officials were urged to take on the responsibility of achieving the resolutions of the meeting.
LOCAL WRANGLES
The events beg the question of what Kenyan parties can learn from CPC, locally known as Zhōngguó Gòngchnd ng. Kenya’s 80-plus political parties are wrought with all forms of wrangles, both in the open and behind boardroom curtains.
The bitter fallout between President William Ruto and Deputy President Rigathi, culminating in the latter’s impeachment, comes to mind.
UDA, the party at the height of wrangles, was birthed after Ruto and President Uhuru Kenyatta drifted apart over a botched 2022 election deal. Ex-Senator Cleophas Malala was the first casualty, having been kicked out as secretary general after weeks of upheavals at the party headquarters.
A court recently ruled on a row at the Jubilee Party, where it ordered the Kanini Kega (EALA MP)-led faction to let Jeremiah Kioni’s team manage the party’s affairs.
Recently, Raila Odinga deployed four ODM top guns to Ruto’s Cabinet at the height of a supremacy battle over his succession.
Musalia Mudavadi’s Amani National Congress (ANC) also had leaders differing over the move to dissolve the party to join UDA.
Ford Kenya, on the other hand, has declined to budge on calls for a merger with UDA, rocking Kenya Kwanza from within. Several other mega political parties in the country are affected, even as poll experts ask why the country should not just have one or two major ideology-driven parties.
“There is nothing wrong in having two or three mega political parties that are better organised and serving the people fervently,” ANC ICT director Nathaniel Mong’are says.
His colleague Kennedy Omulo Jr adds, “This is the reason we are pushing for a merger of all Kenya Kwanza parties into one outfit for better order.”
PEOPLE-CENTRED
At 103 years old and with more than 99 million members, CPC could pass as the most organised jumbo political outfit, with successes in tow.
The members are grouped into more than 4.5 million party branches, with each having an average of 20 members. The rules are so flexible that a branch is established wherever there are more than three party members.
Thus all neighbourhoods, urban and rural, have branches. About 90 per cent of public enterprises have resident party branches, which supervise day-to-day operations and play roles in decision-making.
Private enterprises and social organisations also have branches, while local branches are the root of the CPC governance. During this writer’s stay in China, it was commonplace to find a CPC office in a university, an organised community setting or a school.
There is a chance that every seven Chinese out of 10 that you meet are members of the party, a situation they say gives them a sense of ownership.
For the ubiquitous members, the central call is to “make China a moderately prosperous society with benefits felt by the more than 1.4 billion Chinese people”.
Chinese scholars attribute the precision in the CPC operations to one thing: leadership.
It is also cited for fuelling China’s accelerated economic growth under President Xi. Yang Yinjie, author of a book titled ‘Ten Factors Leading to the CPC Success’, says that at the party, the rules are simple: the people come first.
“In line with its consistent style of advancing with the times, the Communist Party of China has actively acted as the leader of the times, keenly grasped the pulse of the times, turned the wishes and voices of the people into their own missions, and initiated a great process of reform and opening up to the outside world,” he wrote.
Merit, integrity, ability and loyalty to the party are given more weight by locals engaged in one-on-one conversations for selecting CPC’s top leadership.
According to the Chinese scholar, CPC’s success narrows down to 10 reasons, central in them being how its cultural genes have shaped the character of the nation.
Yinjie says CPC has succeeded by advocating benevolence, or putting the people above everything else. The party also stresses people-centred development, in the sense that the people are the supreme arbitrators and final judges.
He says the CPC has lived to the tenets that speak to Chinese people’s gene of valuing goodwill, responsibility and faith. CPC, he adds, stresses the aspect of a party leaving an inheritance, and that a good inheritance means good innovation.
The party, he adds, stresses self-cultivation as the beginning of everything and also knows the need for change for long-term and stable development.
PARTY PRINCIPLES
The party’s other selling point, according to the analysis, is that it upholds justice as “the strongest force” behind a stable country.
CPC also operates under the auspice of upholding harmony “as the historical gene of the Chinese nation”.
The party also promotes environmental conservation, values ecology and thus promotes attributes that citizens and leaders respect, adapt to and respect nature.
The party is also founded on the principle of seeking great harmony, which is to advance common interest of all. Leadership was among the top conversations during the third plenary of the 20th CPC Central Committee meeting recently.
The party’s leadership was cited as the “fundamental guarantee for deepening reform comprehensively to advance Chinese modernisation”.
CPC works under tenets including political integrity, thinking in big-picture terms, following the leadership core and aligning with the central party leadership.
“We must maintain keen awareness of the need to use the party’s own transformation to steer social transformation,” the party’s top organ said.
“We must continue to apply the spirit of reform and strict standards in conducting party self-governance.” Various world leaders have hailed CPC for leading the Chinese people in building the country into a major economy, alleviating poverty and advancing technology.
The CPC is touted for lifting 98 million people in rural China out of poverty. In 2020, all impoverished counties were officially recognised as having exited poverty. Industries have also grown, with the manufacturing industry topping Sh601 trillion.
A number of intelligent and green industries have also taken shape. China has stirred lots of arguments on whether it is overproducing electric vehicles, solar batteries and lithium-ion batteries, famously known as China’s new three.
The Asian economic powerhouse, thanks to its political leadership, has also attained 40 per cent of the world’s total newly installed renewable energy capacity.
Chinese CPC has also set eyes on achieving peak carbon emissions by 2030 and becoming carbon neutral by 2060.
In its 20th session, the CPC Central Committee, like the Cabinet in
Kenya, resolved to pursue reform
measures to improve the economy
further.