Unrestricted Warfare (Chao Xian Zhan) 1.2.2 The PRC and the CCP
Chapter 1: China and the Communist Party of China
2.2. CCP-1
China’s political system is a one-party dictatorship under the Chinese Communist Party, fundamentally different from liberal democracies like ours. In terms of the traditions and spiritual civilization that have historically existed on the Chinese mainland, modern China is largely disconnected from its past. This is because the Chinese Communist Party has carried out socialist reforms and the Cultural Revolution, leading to the near destruction of the traditions, philosophies, and cultural heritage that various ethnic groups had preserved throughout history.
The Establishment of the PRC
Following the establishment of the People’s Republic of China on 1 October 1949, the Chinese Communist Party transformed the mainland into a one-party socialist state. In the process of consolidating this system, an estimated 60 to 80 million Chinese people lost their lives. Among them, tens of millions were killed through violent means, including public trials and class struggle campaigns, while at least 40 million perished as a result of socialist experiments—without a single shot being fired.
These figures account solely for those who lost their lives. Beyond physical deaths, those who remained on the mainland endured both tangible and intangible forms of oppression and persecution. Excluding Communist Party members, hundreds of millions of Chinese people suffered immense political, economic, social, and religious hardship under Mao Zedong’s socialist reforms, facing severe restrictions on their freedom of thought, conscience, and values.
In reality, such tragedies are not exclusive to mainland China under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party. Rather, they are the inevitable outcome whenever a communist party successfully overthrows a system and establishes a communist regime under the guise of equality and justice—without exception.
The outcome is invariably marked by extreme personality cults (as seen with Stalin in the Soviet Union, Kim Il-sung in North Korea, and Mao Zedong in China), the emergence of a privileged Communist Party elite, widespread corruption and dysfunction among the ruling class, the erosion of conscience and spiritual civilization, deep-seated mutual distrust, an entrenched culture of extreme individualism, economic leveling-down, and the suppression of freedom. Mainland China under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party serves as a stark example of these patterns.
In modern China, full-scale socialist policies, the Great Leap Forward massacres, and the Cultural Revolution led to the destruction of the civilization that had developed on the mainland over thousands of years. In particular, the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) resulted in the near-total eradication of traditional philosophies, religions, values, and cultural heritage. It was, in essence, a “revolution of cultural devastation.” The generation that came of age during this period now constitutes China’s current leadership.
This generation, having been indoctrinated from a young age by Mao Zedong, became the Red Guards, zealously promoting class struggle and violent revolution while actively rejecting and dismantling the values of previous generations. Driven by collective fanaticism, they roamed across China, destroying everything in their path. Yet, in the end, they too were discarded by Mao himself. As a result, all that remained for them was a spiritual void and profound psychological disillusionment.
Reform and Opening-Up Policies
The chaos instigated and fueled by Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party left behind a landscape of division, conflict, hatred, mutual denunciation, violence, and destruction. In its wake, what remained was an overwhelming sense of emptiness, nihilism, extreme distrust, and an entrenched culture of self-interest. Additionally, collectivism based on personal gain—exemplified by the guanxi (关系) network—became deeply embedded in Chinese society. With the Communist Party controlling all aspects of life and eliminating any mechanisms to check its absolute power, corruption, injustice, privilege, and favoritism became the accepted norms of the Party-controlled system.
The leaders whose names remain familiar to us today—figures such as Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, Lin Biao, Deng Xiaoping, and Hu Yaobang—were those who survived the brutal internal power struggles and revolutionary purges within the Chinese Communist Party to secure political dominance. These individuals played a leading role in consolidating the Party’s control over the mainland, driving the socialist transformation process, and orchestrating mass killings of Chinese citizens.
However, having witnessed firsthand the immense political, economic, and social catastrophes that unfolded under Mao’s rule, they also became targets of his relentless power struggles. Many of them suffered persecution during the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, enduring severe personal hardships. Through these experiences, they were ultimately forced to acknowledge the failure of China’s socialist experiments and recognize the urgent need for change. This realization paved the way for the reform and opening-up policies that were implemented following Mao’s death.
The Socialist Market Economy with Chinese Characteristics
There are various interpretations of the reform and opening-up policies, but the essence lies in the Chinese Communist Party’s acknowledgment of the failure of its socialist experiment. By recognizing the failure of socialism, the Party ultimately adopted the capitalism it had long despised and attacked, marking the core of the reform and opening-up process.
The introduction of a capitalist system, though limited, also implied the necessity of allowing political and economic freedoms. In other words, the Chinese Communist Party began to loosen the chains of socialism and egalitarianism that had tightly bound the Chinese people. As a result, the Chinese, previously constrained by these ideologies, were finally able to unleash their economic and social potential. The reform and opening-up process can be seen as the period in which socialism was discarded, and the economy regained its vitality. In other words, the economic growth following the reform and opening-up was less a triumph of the Chinese Communist Party or Deng Xiaoping’s leadership, and more a result of the Party’s abandonment of socialist planned economics and the partial allowance of markets and autonomy within Chinese society.
Despite the changes of the post-reform era, modern China remains an authoritarian one-party state, where the Chinese Communist Party continues to monopolize political power, economic control, and social surveillance. Ironically, the Party, which seized power under the banner of equality and the liberation of the working and peasant classes, has established a privileged ruling class within its own ranks. Following the acknowledgment of socialism’s failure and the subsequent reform and opening-up policies, the Party’s privileged power has only grown stronger.
It is a common misconception that China, after launching its reform and opening-up policies, transformed into a society indistinguishable from those of liberal democracies. While there have certainly been significant changes compared to the Mao Zedong era, much of this change was driven by the necessity to expand individual freedoms to some degree in order to further marketization (or capitalism). It is also true that, from the 1990s to the late 2000s, the Chinese Communist Party attempted political reforms in response to the evolving social landscape in China.
However, the Chinese Communist Party has adhered to the policy of “One Central Task, Two Basic Points” (yī gè zhōngxīn, liǎng gè jī běn diǎn), as articulated by Deng Xiaoping. In other words, marketization (or capitalism) was clearly framed as a means to strengthen China’s economic power and achieve the Party’s goals. This approach underscores that, regardless of the circumstances, the Chinese Communist Party will never relinquish its monopoly on power or its authoritarian rule. This is the foundation of the “socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics” (zhōngguó shèhuì zhǔyì shìchǎng jīngjì) model.
As China achieved explosive economic success through the marketization process, the Party, military, and political elite centered around the Chinese Communist Party were able to amass significant economic wealth. However, during this period, the gap between the rich and the poor worsened to one of the highest levels in the world.
Income Inequality and the Privileged Class
China’s extreme income inequality was also a result of deliberate policy decisions. Based on Deng Xiaoping’s “early starters” strategy, preferential treatment was concentrated in the eastern coastal cities to attract foreign capital and technology. In the process, the rural areas and the agricultural sector were sacrificed, while preferential policies were applied to the industrial sector. This led to the mobilization of hundreds of millions of people into urban industrial sectors as part of a large-scale reserve army of labor.
The industrial reserve army mainly consisted of individuals from underdeveloped rural areas, providing ultra-low-cost labor. These workers are commonly referred to as mingong (migrant workers). One of the most important factors that allowed China to become the “world’s factory” and a production base for foreign companies was the massive supply of this ultra-low-cost labor.
Under the one-party dictatorship of the Chinese Communist Party, as China pursued its socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics, the monopoly on political and economic power by the Party only deepened. Based on this monopoly, even the rapidly expanding businesses and capital that grew during the marketization process came under the Party’s control.