[Biweekly Symposium] No. 591: Some Questions about Modern Party Politics.

Lecturer: WANG Changjiang

Host: QIN Sidao

Commentators: CAI Xia, ZHANG Lifan, RONG Jian

Professor WANG Changjiang started with the recognition that a topic of modern party politics was by all means an weighted issue in the domestic or global context. He then illustrated the unique and general features of the Chinese Communist Party(CCP), modern state governance, and the modernization of the CCP. 

He thought there were two functions of a political party, one was to express the opinions of the public, the other was to represent the public. For China, the concept of political parties was a foreign one. He rejected the argument that the party had control of the public, or the party dominated public discourse and opinions. He thought the modernization of the party meant the revised interaction between the party and the public. That is also where reforms are needed for the sustainment of the political parties. Whenever there are crises, there are reforms. Whether the political system survives depends on whether the reforms surpass the crises, or the crises surpass the reforms. When reforms were brought in too late to effectively influence the development of the political parties, then such reforms would be futile. 

Unirule Biweekly Symposium has been serving the Chinese public as an open platform for academic exchange.