Book review: Party Time: Who Runs China and How, by Rowan Callick

Party Time: Who Runs China and How

by Rowan Callick

Black Inc

Mark O'Neill

"China's Communist Party has become the most powerful organisation in the world, even overtaking the Vatican, whose authority, focused by Pope John Paul II, helped destroy the Soviet empire in the 1980s."

This book is about that organisation. "It rules today in a manner that is routine, impersonal, even somewhat boring to some of its members - but also relentless and unapologetic," writes Rowan Callick, Asia-Pacific editor for The Australian. He was its correspondent in Beijing from 2006 to 2009. From 1996 to 2000, he was correspondent for the Australian Financial Review, based in Hong Kong.

It is a subject well worth writing about. It is the world's richest and most powerful political party but does not publish its annual budget or details of its meetings. While its teacher, the Soviet Communist Party, has collapsed through its own mistakes, the Chinese student has adapted remarkably and created the world's second biggest economic power.

As Callick writes, every key institution in China is answerable to the party and it owns all the assets of the state. "The party's logic is this: we fought for power and won, we took control of China and so everything under the sky is the party's", in the pithy description of Wu Si, editor of the Yan Huang Chun Qiu magazine.

In 2011, its membership reached 82.6 million, of whom 39 per cent have degrees, 38.5 per cent are farmers or urban workers, and 6.7 per cent are from the 55 ethnic minorities. This corps includes many of the country's best and brightest and runs almost every institution on the mainland.

In 2010, 21.6 million applied to join but only 3.2 million were accepted; that year 32,000 were expelled or withdrew "to ensure the advance nature and purity of the party" according to a top official.

The attraction is the opportunity to join a winning team: promotion, housing, money, share issues, foreign travel. The downside is the loss of time to attend meetings and say and write things you do not believe - a small price to pay for the rewards. Is working in a government institution or multinational in other countries any different?

The merit of Callick's book is that he lets party members tell the story. The wealth of the book is in the interviews with members in many walks of life, who describe the good and bad points, and the accounts of party institutions such as the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the new National Cadre School in Pudong, Shanghai.

There are chapters on joining the party, cadre school, the security agencies, the justice system, the media, art and culture, "controlling legends", Confucius, life at the top and doing business.

For those who want to learn more about this key institution, this is a very useful book.