 Good afternoon, everyone. I'm very pleased to welcome you to this IIEA webinar. We're delighted to be joined today by Professor Martin K. Dmitrov, who has been generous enough to take time out of his busy schedule to speak to us today. Professor Dmitrov will deliver an address for about 20 minutes where he will discuss the future of the Chinese Communist Party as it enters its second century. After he has concluded his presentation, we will have a Q&A session with our audience. You will be able to join the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom, which you should see on your screens. Please feel free to send in your questions throughout the session as they occur to you. And please be sure to include your name and affiliation with your question. You can also join the discussion on Twitter using the handle at IIEA. And a reminder that today's presentation and Q&A are both on the record. So let me now formally introduce Professor Dmitrov before handing over to him. Martin K. Dmitrov is Professor of Political Science and Director of Graduate Studies at Tulane University in Louisiana in the United States. His research focuses on the Chinese Communist Party and the politics of East Asia. He has written numerous books, including Piracy and the State, The Politics of Intellectual Property Rights in China, Why Communism Did Not Collapse, Understanding Authoritarian Regime Resilience in Asia and Europe, and The Politics of Socialist Consumption. His new book, The Adaptability of the Chinese Communist Party, will be published by Cambridge University Press this year. So without further ado, I will give the floor to Professor Dmitrov. Thank you, Ambassador Neary for this very generous introduction. I also want to thank IIEA for the invitation to deliver this seminar. Barry Colfer for organizing the event. He and Fitzgerald and the rest of the staff who are working behind the scenes for making sure that everything goes well on the technical side of things. Thank you all who have joined us for this event. I will make a 20-minute PowerPoint presentation and then we are going to move to question and answer. The presentation is based on the short book that Ambassador Neary referenced that is coming later this year. The book is on the adaptability of the Chinese Communist Party. This of course addresses the bigger issue of the continued capacity of the Chinese Communist Party to stay in power for the next 100 years. Why not? Now the questions for today are how did the Chinese Communist Party respond to the events of 1989? There are many potential answers. One answer is presented in this book that is coming out later this year. I am reviewing four different adaptations in addition to the use of repression. Of course, the four adaptations involve expanding the scope of private activity, extending the social safety net, promoting indigenous cultural consumption, and finally, rivaling corporations through organizational inclusion. This is what I will talk about today by talking about the adaptability of the Chinese Communist Party. An unresolved question is how long will these adaptations be effective? This is the question with which we will end the short presentation today. Now what I will do more specifically is I will briefly reference the collapse of communism and then I will talk about one response to the collapse of communism, which is rivaling corporation that is accomplished primarily through the Chinese Communist Party, but there are also some other mechanisms that I will briefly reference. And then at the end, I will talk about the limits of rivaling corporation and of course, implications for the future. 89, as we all recall, was a momentous event, both in China, those are scenes from Tiananmen Square in 89, and in Europe, the fall of the Berlin Wall. The communist world was expansive before 89, and then it became much less so after 89. 89 ushered in a period of self-examination and of deep reflection about the future of China. One answer to how China dealt with 89 is provided in this volume that I edited and here is the cover, but the answer that is provided by that volume is broader than just the Chinese case. It is looking both at the collapse of communism in Europe and its survival in Asia. And what I'm doing in this new book is I'm focusing specifically on the Chinese case and specifically on China after 89. And one aspect of my argument is this notion of rivaling corporation. So first, I will define rivaling corporation. It mostly means inclusion. There are different ways of thinking about it, but it's inclusion of potential opponents to the regime through different mechanisms. And here the mechanisms include legislatures, cabinet nationwide organizations, and finally parties. I believe that parties are the most effective mechanism for dealing with potential rivals. And the reason for that is that they have advantages over legislatures and cabinets that can include only a small number of individuals. They also have advantages over nationwide organizations that do not provide substantial benefits for those who include. So political parties are the best weapon that a regime has for engaging in wide-scale incorporation of potential rivals. When we look at the average longevity of non-democracies, we find that those that have single parties last a lot longer than regimes where parties abandon or authoritarian regimes with multiple political parties. And within the group of single-party regimes, there's one subtype which is the communist single-party regimes that outlast the non-communist single-party regimes. And the different ways of measuring the longevity of communist regimes, whether we look at the ones that collapsed or the ones that still survive, both subtypes are extremely long-lasting. So what I'm interested in exploring is why these regimes last so long. And what I will argue about today is that Leninist parties have advantages in rival incorporation over non-Leninist parties. All communist parties are Leninist, although not all Leninist parties are communist. There's one exception. There's one Leninist party that is not communist and that's the KMT, which ruled Taiwan during martial law. The KMT, of course, was created by Soviet advisers in China in the 1920s and organizationally it looks like a Leninist party, ideologically it does not. But the advantages that I'm interested that the Leninist parties have are organizational. They're not ideological. So the organizational advantages of Leninist parties in terms of rival incorporation include depth and breadth. Depth of penetration and breadth of penetration. So the Chinese Communist Party is a Leninist party and the question for us is how it has approached party building after 1989. Well, in order to answer this question we have to look at some empirical indicators and I will start by assessing party building through three generally accepted indicators of strength, growing membership roaster, high number of party structures, and increased level of education of party members. And then I will focus on some indicators that are less clear cut and then I will focus on some problems. Now, in terms of the clear indicators of strength, party membership since 1989 has been expanding rapidly. The most recent statistics we have were released last year in July when the party celebrated its 100th anniversary and at that point in time it had had 95 million members which is equivalent to about 6.8% of China's population. Another indicator of growth is the number of party branches in China. It's here they're party branches, general branches and party committees. This is an increasing order of size of the organization when we move from branch to party committee. No matter how we look at them they have all increased from 89. The third generally accepted indicator of strength is the increasing educational achievement of party members. As we see the Chinese Communist Party at the moment when the revolution triumphed in 49 was a party of illiterate members, 69% illiteracy rate among Communist Party members. By 2000 illiteracy is down to 2.55%. Correspondingly with the decline of illiteracy among Chinese Communist Party members educational achievement increases. Here we're measuring individuals that have more than a high school diploma. So it's an associate's degree or higher. The proportion of such party members was way lower than 1% in 1949 by 2021 more than half of party members had greater educational achievement than a high school diploma. So an associate's degree or higher. So those are three general indicators of strength. However, there are some indicators that are at least at first glance more ambiguous. And here I will talk about elitism an older membership base and the decline in the number of applicants. Now elitism, we measure this indicator by looking at the number of workers and peasants in the Chinese Communist Party. So according to the party constitution this is a party of workers and peasants but they collectively account for about one third of party members as of 2021. This means that the other two thirds are individuals with advanced degrees their business people their professionals they're not the workers and peasants that the party claims to represent. Therefore, the party is moving towards higher social economic groups. The party is also getting older. We measure that by looking at members 61 years or older. In China, those are all retirees because women still retired 55 or 50 if they engage in heavy labor men retire at 60 or younger. So when we look at members 61 or older their retirees and this obviously impacts the capacity of the party to be a vigorous political entity. Finally, we have fewer individuals who apply for membership. In China, you have to apply in order to be a member of the party and then your application has to be examined. There is a trial period and then at the end of this trial period you may be admitted. Now you might wonder how do we still have an increase in the number of party members when fewer people apply? It means that the party is becoming less discriminant. So the party members are still increasing although the number of applications is decreasing. That means that a greater percentage of those who apply end up being admitted for membership in the party. In general, this is not a positive indicator of the decline of applications to join. Moving on, in terms of our general assessment of party building in China, we have to acknowledge that the size of dynamism, such as increasing size, increasing number of party structures, and increasing educational achievement of party members, but at the same time, their size of ossification, fewer applicants to join the party, an older membership base, and a more elitist party because of the fewer workers and peasants in the party. Therefore, we have a coexistence of dynamism and ossification in the party and the implications of that are that the future is uncertain. Now, those are general indicators primarily of the depth of the party. But what can we say about the breadth of party building? Well, in order to address this question, we have to look at party building in specific sectors. So here I will offer three different sectors for us to consider, educational institutions, NGOs, and private firms. Now, party building in educational institutions is an important topic in China. This is one area in which the party is establishing very firm control. It has near complete penetration of all universities in China. It also establishes control overseas through the Chinese students and scholars associations of various groups of students. Party building in educational institutions is important because in Western theories of political change and autocracies, students are typically seen as a pro-democratic group. Well, if the Communist Party is in every single university in China, it is not quite clear how those students might become a pro-democratic force. Secondly, party building in civil society organizations commonly known as NGOs in the west. As you see, the number of party structures in these NGOs has been rapidly increasing. Over two thirds of NGOs in China currently have party committees. NGOs above a certain size are required to have party committees. Again, NGOs, civil society, and the general democratization literature are understood as forces that might lead to democratization and certainly work against authoritarianism, yet the party has successfully penetrated them. Next, private firms in the general literature, capitalism is a pro-democratic force, not in China. Over two thirds of private firms have party committees in them. So the party is very successful in terms of the breadth of penetration as illustrated by these indicators of educational institutions, NGOs, and private firms. At the same time, there are certain problems that the party is facing in terms of the incorporation of certain groups, ethnic minorities, system critical intellectuals, and then finally party building in Hong Kong and Macau. I will review each of them individually. Penetration of ethnic minorities in China. On the one hand, if we look at the percentage of ethnic minorities in the Chinese Communist Party, as of 2021, it is roughly on par with the share of minorities in the population overall. However, what the statistic is hiding is the fact that certain minorities are underrepresented and other minorities are overrepresented in the party. So statistics on this issue are extremely difficult to obtain, so I have them for 2006 and that's the only year for which I have them. But they do reveal that in that year, the Han Chinese, the ethnic minority, were, as we might expect, overrepresented in the Chinese Communist Party. The same can be said about two other minorities, the Mongols and the Koreans. The Tibetans were underrepresented and the Uyghurs were severely underrepresented in the party when compared to the share in the overall population. And not coincidentally, the Tibetans and the Uyghurs who are the two most dissatisfied ethnic groups, those are the two regions in which we have long-standing tensions, ethnic tensions, and the party is aware of the importance of incorporating these minorities through giving them membership in the party, but it has not been successful at that task. Moving on to our second indicator of a problem for the party incorporation of system critical intellectuals, the argument about China has always been that it's different from Eastern Europe, where in Eastern Europe, you had individuals like Vaclav Havel, the Charter 77, who existed outside the party and in China, the argument has been that critical intellectuals exist within the party. They incorporated in the party and they engage in inner party criticism. And yet, some critical intellectuals have emerged. They've become visible, which is an indicator that they have not been successfully incorporated, which then raises the questions whether more such individuals will emerge in the future. This, of course, is an open question. Third, penetration of Hong Kong and Macau. So when it comes to Hong Kong and Macau, there's a lot that we don't know. We know a few things. We know that the Chinese Communist Party operated in Hong Kong through the Xinhua news agency and the liaison office. We know that it has openly expressed support for the Democratic alliance for the betterment of Hong Kong and the Federation of Trade Unions in Hong Kong. We do not know its membership size in either Hong Kong or Macau. Those statistics have never been released. And we don't know how it uses the nomenclatura system for appointments to government institutions. We also don't know about its presence in educational institutions, social organizations and firms. The fact that we don't know doesn't mean that those indicators don't exist. They just appear to be impossible to obtain. But penetration of Hong Kong and Macau are certainly tasks that the party is still working on. So these are in progress and there have been some challenges there as illustrated most recently by the ongoing civil unrest in Hong Kong throughout the 2010s. Now summing up in terms of this first mechanism of rival incorporation through the party. There are some successes and also some ongoing challenges. The party is not the only mechanism for incorporating potential rivals in China due to the lack of time. We can't go in detail about mechanisms of non-party incorporation. They are in my mind. And if you're interested, we can talk about them during the Q&A. But here are the mechanisms of non-party incorporation. There are three main ones. Nationwide social organizations like the Women's Federation the Trade Union Federation and also a party department called the United Front Work Department that focuses on private entrepreneurs minorities overseas Chinese communities and the like. But I will not talk about them. I will move towards conclusions and then a final question and then we can move on to your questions. So what have we learned in this brief presentation today? The Chinese Communist Party is successful at rival incorporation. It is able to achieve both depth of penetration as illustrated by its growing size and breadth of penetration as indicated by its successful establishment of a presence in universities two-thirds of the NGOs and two-thirds of the private firms in China. However, they are troubling signs as well. The party is getting more elitist. It's getting older and it is getting more and more as illustrated by the fact that fewer individuals want to join it. The party is also experiencing difficulties with ethnic minorities with system critical intellectuals and in places like Hong Kong. Now auxiliary mechanisms for rival incorporation beyond the Chinese Communist Party do exist such as the Women's Federation Trade Unions and the United Front Work Department, but the party is the main mechanism for the Chinese Communist Party to be able to take a step back to the political and not everything is going as smoothly as the party might want to. Now I do have a final question which comes with a graph. And the final question which is aimed to be a provocative one is whether the Chinese Communist Party size has already peaked. The Chinese Communist Party is firmly committed to giving this talk. I've given it a few times. Well, why does the party want to grow? Because it does. I mean, it's one of those things. The party wants to continue to increase the depth and the breadth of its penetration. It wants to recruit more and more members. It is deeply troubled by the fact that it has fewer applicants. But what can we infer from this graph? So here I am contrasting with where the Bulgarian Communist Party no longer exists, but it peaked at over 10% of the population before the collapse of communism. And then Cuba and China to revolutionary regimes. In Cuba, the Cuban Communist Party has already contracted in size in the last decade. A very curious phenomenon. It peaked at slightly above 7%, and now it's below 7%. And the Chinese Communist Party has already peaked at 8%. For comparison purposes, and not on this slide, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at the peak of its expansion in 1988 had membership that was equivalent to 6.83% of the population of the Soviet Union. This is what China is today. So perhaps the Chinese Communist Party has already peaked and it can't grow any further. So on this note, I will stop sharing. I will thank you for your attention. I'm looking forward to your questions.