China's party membership figures expose Xi's concerns

Beijing [China], July 26 : Ahead of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) twice-a-decade national congress in November, an intra-party bulletin that updated membership figures of the CCP has ruffled some feathers among some China analysts.
Last month, the Organization Department of the CCP Central Committee said that the number of the Communist Party of China (CPC) members surpassed 96.71 million by the end of 2021.
The membership was 3.7 per cent up from the 2020 figure, and 15.9 per cent more than the figure when the 18th CCP National Congress was held in late 2012, Xinhua news agency reported.
According to the Chinese news agency, more than 4.38 million people joined the CPC last year when the Party marked its centenary, figures from the report showed. The CCP had nearly 4.94 million primary-level Party organizations as of the end of 2021, an increase of 117,000 from the previous year.
Xinhua reported that CCP has been making constant efforts to attract new members and become a vanguard to ensure the Party maintains its strong vitality and combat capacity.
The composition of Party membership has continuously improved with better levels of education and steady growth in the proportion of female members and those from ethnic minority groups, it added.
Writing for The Washington Times, China analyst Jianli Yang, said, "Under China's state propaganda machinery, the 'fact' that party membership increased during the worst period of the pandemic is supposed to imply that ordinary Chinese citizens fully supported the leadership's lockdown measures and were unperturbed by food shortages."
Jianli Yang argued that the statistics also reveal a subtle attempt by the leadership to assert that party membership increased the most after Xi Jinping came to power in 2012.
The China analyst highlighted how in a short span between 2012 and 2021, the CCP grew by an astounding 21 million members. Notably, Jianli points out that among CCP members, there is an issue of "dual" loyalty: loyalty to the party and loyalty to Xi himself.
Since the Chinese Chairman's ascent to power, Jianli argued that Xi has made relentless efforts to assert the CCP's dominance and coerce members to reaffirm their commitment to the party's ideology and "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era."
Xi is more concerned about the party's loyalty to him.
"He (Xi) has spent years building an 'imperial' presidency and cult of personality, through his 'anti-corruption' campaigns through which potential rivals were purged or deterred. Party members have been asked to pledge personal loyalty to Mr Xi, reminiscent of Mao's Cultural Revolution," the China analyst added.