Party versus market in post‐Mao China: The erosion of the Leninist organization from below

In common with other communist regimes, post‐1949 China has deployed the organizational weapon of communist party penetration of all levels of administration and all work units, using the primary party organization (PPO) as an effective means of control. However, in the context of market‐based economic reform, itself induced by the top party leadership, the PPOs' ideological and political functions have become irrelevant, if not counter‐productive. Professionally competent managers (‘experts’) rather than ideologically qualified political leaders (‘reds’) are required in the new context, and party members, affected by the common urge for better‐paid work, are abandoning their jobs and constituting a ‘floating’ membership. This ‘organizational erosion from below’ threatens the whole system of governance in modern China, carrying the potential for fundamental political change over the longer term.