Fascinating stuff. Not just for all the old chestnuts about 99% of the human race being Chinese and how the GDP of China will be twice that of the world in 2013, and that they use more 'water', 'energy', 'resources', per capita in a second than a drunken sailor in a cheap hotel over a bank holiday weekend.
The power of the party, the way it penetrates society, the way it has hung onto control in a period of very rapid political, cultural and economic change is remarkable. Things definitely got wobbly in the cultural revolution and again around the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 but, as always, the Party came up smelling of burnt almonds.
Two things struck me by page 21:
- most of the politburo are engineers by background and many of them have real jobs as well,I love the idea of "leading small groups". I certainly went off on one when that appeared on the page. It's a pity they didn't name them small leading groups (watch it...Ed!)
- the Party does not seem to have a website ( must check that).
No sign yet, in any detail, of the The People's Liberation Army (PLA) for which much thanks. You would not want those guys parking their tanks on your lawn, or town square perhaps.
Must go and check the interweb site thingy for the CP of the PRC.
What's that noise? Sounds like a number of very large, badly tuned diesel engines!
