Summary of Richard McGregor's The Party

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 At the 2007 Chinese Communist Party congress, which was held in Beijing, China, nine men were elected to lead the country for the next five years. The key thing was not how they walked on to the stage, but the order in which they appeared.

#2 The Chinese government maintains a national petitions office in the capital, where citizens can complain about official misconduct. Ahead of the party congress, Beijing threatened to mark down the careers of local leaders if residents from their cities made it to the capital to use this office.

#3 The Party has unveiled its new leadership, and by definition, the leadership of the government and the country, in the same way for decades. The leadership candidates had been locked in complex, private negotiations over the economy, political reform, and corruption for months beforehand.

#4 China’s president, Hu Jintao, and party secretary, Chen Ailian, were the two people I met while in China. Hu had immense power to set the parameters for government policy. He had attempted to fashion an imperial-era image for himself in his first five-year term, starting in 2002, as a sort of benevolent emperor.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jun 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822517325

IRB Media

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Insights on Richard McGregor's The Party

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

At the 2007 Chinese Communist Party congress, which was held in Beijing, China, nine men were elected to lead the country for the next five years. The key thing was not how they walked on to the stage, but the order in which they appeared.

#2

The Chinese government maintains a national petitions office in the capital, where citizens can complain about official misconduct. Ahead of the party congress, Beijing threatened to mark down the careers of local leaders if residents from their cities made it to the capital to use this office.

#3

The Party has unveiled its new leadership, and by definition, the leadership of the government and the country, in the same way for decades. The leadership candidates had been locked in complex, private negotiations over the economy, political reform, and corruption for months beforehand.

#4

China’s president, Hu Jintao, and party secretary, Chen Ailian, were the two people I met while in China. Hu had immense power to set the parameters for government policy. He had attempted to fashion an imperial-era image for himself in his first five-year term, starting in 2002, as a sort of benevolent emperor.

#5

Hu’s image-management was very different from his predecessors’. He was a cautious, careful consensus-builder who lacked the charisma of his predecessors. The way the Party has grown at the expense of its leaders dictated his low profile long before his promotion to party secretary.

#6

The Politburo’s inner circle was largely unknown outside of China, and their speeches were brief and packed with political jargon. The public was excluded from formal politics, and few ordinary citizens could even recognize most of the nine men in the Politburo’s inner circle.

#7

The red machine is a phone that connects only to similar phones with four-digit numbers within the same encrypted system. It is coveted by the top state officials, who have every modern communications device at their fingertips.

#8

The Chinese Communist Party takes ruling-class networking to an entirely new level. The red machine gives the party apparatus a hotline into multiple arms of the state, including the government-owned companies that China promotes around the world as independent commercial entities.

#9

The Vatican and the Chinese Communist Party are two of the few states that have been unable to establish diplomatic ties with China. The Vatican has not been able to reconcile its worldwide prerogative to appoint bishops with the Party’s insistence that it alone has the right