CCP membership ≠ being a spy

No-one is being reasonable about the latest ‘leak’ from China, and I don’t know whether to be sad or disappointed.

As someone who has spent a lot of time studying modern Chinese history, I fully understand that I have a lot of in-depth knowledge that I take for granted. That said, the more I read about contemporary China in the news, the more I despair at the lack of contextual information or general knowledge about how China functions as a nation state.

I would have assumed that the ‘China experts’ or ‘Asia tsars’ or whoever the world’s major governments have on hand to whisper in their ears about China would actually tell them things about China. Useful things, like “What is the CCP?” “How does the Chinese government work?” “Are all Chinese people spies?”

As usual, the recent news that a leak of Communist Party ‘Operatives’ (i.e. members) working in international businesses reveals China’s plans to take over the world has completely undermined my faith in so-called China ‘experts’ (or... ‘operatives’?). An article by The Australian has revealed a ‘secret’ list of 2 million CCP members, unveiling “the secrecy shrouding CCP operations and exposes how party branches are embedded in some of the world’s biggest companies, with intelligence experts warning China is using the structure to achieve global dominance.”

These party members work for major international brands including Boeing, Volkswagen, Pfizer, Ikea (Ikea!) and more. Someone on this list even had the audacity to be a professor at an Australian University. According to this article, these party members are proverbial ‘ghosts’ in the global machine, taught only to do the party’s bidding, including stealing submarine blueprints, something the CCP definitely couldn’t get without them.

I really want to spend the bulk of this newsletter explaining why membership in the CCP does not automatically make people spies, and besides, the CCP has much easier ways of interfering in international companies. But before I dive into some academic subjects of interest, I thought it best to just cover some really obvious, basic points about this issue so that we can understand just how much people are overreacting to this ‘news’.

First and foremost, we should probably address the idea that the information was leaked? Being a member of the CCP is not confidential information. It’s something that people openly put on their résumés because, again, the CCP is not a super-spy organisation. It’s not like being part of MI5. It’s literally the ruling party in a one party state. Leaking the list of members would be the same as leaking any list of members of any major political party in the majority of countries that I can think of. If you asked any of these people if they were party members, they probably would have just told you.

Secondly, the CCP has around 90 million members. While that’s less than 10% of the population of China, it’s about 150% of the population of the United Kingdom. This is a lot of people, from a lot of different backgrounds, from a lot of different areas, with a lot of different interests, qualifications, etc. The idea that these people have jobs, some of which are in the private sector, really should not be a surprise to people. Being a member of the CCP is not a job, unless you also have a job within the party organisation itself.

Further, having a job in an organisation is not the same as having influence in that organisation. Apparently, there are some 390 CCP members working for Hewlett-Packard, which seems like a lot, until you realise that:

1. Hewlett-Packard employs around 61,600 people worldwide

2. These 390 members work in China

3. They work across 14 different branches across China and probably don’t even know each other.

But it could be argued that certain kinds of jobs have more influence than others, which is what some more savvy journalists are attempting to argue. There was a lot of uproar over the fact that some senior staff at certain firms were CCP members. For example, the current Senior Vice-President of HSBC China* is apparently a member of the party, which according to an article in the Telegraph means that China can now single-handedly shape the geopolitical landscape at will.

This would be a neat argument, if not for the fact that the branches discussed in the article are all based in China, and therefore already subject to oversight by the CCP and the laws of China. The fact that their senior staff are also CCP members makes almost no difference to this fact. If a major business based in China were to receive instructions from the party, they would have to follow them regardless of the number of party members employed by the company (a point which we’ll get into a bit later).

Now that I’ve addressed the obvious reasons why this news is silly and overblown, I want to dive into some deeper points about how being a member of the CCP is not the same as being a spy for the CCP, and how the CCP actually influences businesses. (Hint: it’s not by using underpaid interns to manipulate geopolitical supply chains.)

How and why to join the CCP

During this whole debacle, a question that people have failed to ask themselves is: do people join the CCP because they have a passion for communist dictatorship, or do they join for other, more personal reasons?

Because we’re talking about China (China is the Bond villain in this timeline, by the way), most people have obviously decided to go with the former. The only reason someone would want to join the CCP is because they want to carry out Mao’s dream of continuous revolution, and spread communism throughout the world, destroying Western imperialism and capitalism forever.

OR

We can read the actual research on this matter. 

First, we should look into the types of people actually allowed to join the party. The party’s members are a direct reflection of the party’s strategy for building support among the population. The types of people they recruit are there to help the party maintain its prestige, popularity, and ability to effect change. Thus, member selection is crucial to the survival of the party. It’s a long process, which is usually helped by prior membership in the Communist Youth League between the ages of 15 and 25 first, which itself has a lengthy application process, a part of which requires political loyalty screening (Bian, 2001). 

However, political loyalty is far from the only criteria for joining the party. Since China has focused more on economic development since the 1980s, “higher education now increases one's chances of joining the Communist party” as the party needs qualified cadres running the country’s most important institutions (Bian, 2001). This has also cancelled out previous bias against intellectuals, who Deng Xiaoping conveniently decided were actually part of the working class after the Cultural Revolution. College campuses are now the main source of recruitment drives.

How has the new criteria for joining the CCP since the 1980s affected the types of people joining and their reasons for joining? As the criteria for selecting members have changed, so have the incentives for joining the party in general. Generally speaking, “new recruits to the CCP in recent years are much more likely to acknowledge that they have career interests in mind,” (Dickson, 2014) as “in China becoming a member of the party remains a good strategic choice for attaining an elite position in the party and state hierarchy, in state-run organizations, and in the nonstate, more marketlike economic sector.” (Bian, 2001)

“The perception that Party membership boosts a person's job prospects is not illusory. There is a glass ceiling in many career paths for people who are not Party members. The CCP controls the top positions in most sectors – state bureaucracy, education, state-owned enterprises, banking, etc – and people with ambitious career goals see the benefits of Party membership. Even for people who are just starting out, Party membership is appealing because many employers reportedly see Party membership as an indication that an individual has already passed a screening process and therefore will be a more dependable employee.” (Dickson, 2014)

This does not mean that they are not also loyal to the party. Party members are more likely to volunteer, vote in local elections, and give blood. But their main motivations are skewed by the party’s own objectives to build an economically prosperous state.

I feel I should also add here that most research also shows that just because people want to join the party doesn’t make them more loyal to the party. While members are more likely to engage in political activities, “Party members are not necessarily more likely to support and trust their state institutions: while they do have significantly higher levels of support for the centre than does the population at large, Party membership does not produce increased support for the local state.”

So basically, personal motivations may outweigh dedication to the party when deciding whether or not to join. And actually managing to join does not seem to change this reality.

Also, fun fact: “per capita GDP is negatively related to support for central state institutions. In other words, the more economically developed a city is, all else being equal, the less respondents in that city support the central state institutions.” (Dickson, 2014) Hmmm.

How the Party actually infiltrates private businesses

So, people join the party so that they can earn more money and get better jobs. And the more money they get, the less likely they are to actually trust the [local] party. But this does not mean that they are not also mobilised and used by the party to exact their own plans. Particularly when it comes to organising the state and private economies.

A lot of people believe that CCP efforts to infiltrate international businesses – especially those based in China – are covert operations involving data snooping and trained operatives. The truth is that CCP efforts to infiltrate international businesses tend to be done very openly, with the intentions of the party clearly stated, and often with the full cooperation of the company in question.

Chinese law not only requires foreign companies to have a local business partner in order to set up in the country, but they often demand companies hand over their data and intellectual property as a precondition for accessing the market. Again, many companies do this willingly, because they know that the trade-offs work in their favour. Very few business owners have access to nuclear codes.

If the CCP wants access to your company’s dealings, they will likely just approach you directly to set up a working agreement, if not set up a sub-branch in your office. Since 1998, private companies with 3 party members working there had to set up a ‘party branch’, those with 50 or more members as employees were to set up party committees, and those with no workers had to link up with the Commuist Youth League in order to “carry out ‘activities beneficial to the principles of promoting corporate development… and guide the work of private entrepreneurs, and unite them around the Party, so that they support the work of the Party organizations established in their enterprises.” (Thornton, 2012)

These rules apply to both local and foreign businesses. “Official statistics indicate that by the end of 2014, approximately 1,579,000 private companies in mainland China had established CCP connections, accounting for around 53.1 percent of all Chinese private businesses. In the same period, the proportion of officially defined large private companies with CCP connections exceeded 95 percent.” (Yan, 2017). The fact that there’s a Party-organised trade union in Wal-Mart’s mainland China-based stores has been common knowledge since 2004 (Thornton, 2012).

The presence of the CCP in businesses in China is not just common, it’s inescapable. It should be taken for granted that any branch of any business in China will have connections with the one party in charge of controlling the entire country, including managing the economy. The party works hard to make sure there are business incentives for the other party to ensure cooperation: rewarding private business elites with appointments to party positions, reorienting local party work to support the private economy, and generally not meddling too much in the affairs of the business as long as it’s making a profit.

The relationship between the private sector and party is mutually beneficial. Back to the Telegraph article, they quote party member “Dong Shuyin, deputy president of Standard Chartered in China...had described the CCP as an “indispensable part of [Standard Chartered’s] development in China”.” He didn’t say this because he’s suggesting that the CCP is trying to sneakily infiltrate the organisation and dominate it. He’s saying this because businesses in China cannot thrive – and will be unlikely to survive – without support from the CCP leadership.

TL; DR

The majority of people who join the CCP are not spies, they’re regular people with regular life goals.

Just because someone joins the party, doesn’t mean they’ll do anything for the party. 

The party has always been present in private businesses. This is common knowledge in China Studies. (Please do more reading, China Journalists).

Presence doesn’t necessarily mean control. Usually businesses want party input to thrive, and the party does little to actually intervene, besides nicking some data.

Until the next PR disaster!

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References

Bruce J. Dickson, “Who Wants to Be a Communist? Career Incentives and Mobilized Loyalty in China,” The China Quarterly, MARCH 2014, No. 217

China.org.cn, Membership of CPC tops 90 million

The Australian, “Names, positions of Chinese Community Party operatives revealed in major security leak”

The Conversation, “China makes it incredibly hard for foreign businesses to operate – but they stay because the money is just too good”

The Telegraph, “Senior staff at HSBC, Standard Chartered and Deutsche Bank are Chinese Communist Party members”

Yanjie Bian, Xiaoling Shu and John R. Logan, “Communist Party Membership and Regime Dynamics in China,” Social Forces, Mar., 2001, Vol. 79, No. 3

*[The choice of HSBC as an example is deliberate as the article states “HSBC in particular has struggled to navigate the conflict between being headquartered in the UK but relying on China and Hong Kong, which has imposed a new security law to crack down on protestors, for most of its profits.” This isn’t a problem because the VP of the company is a CCP member. It’s a problem because China is an authoritarian state.]