Shortly after posting the entry on China’s Grand strategy, which partially drew upon an article on the longitudinal transformations of the ideology of the Communist Party of China [CPC], I came across one article that greatly complements what I had just written. It’s an op-ed authored by Xiao Deng, published in China Daily, the English language official gazette of the CPC.

Xiao opens his piece with a statement on the different meanings of basic terms across different contexts; as he suggests, the term “Communist” is somewhat controversial in the West, while in China it refers primarily to the state-building ideology of the modern day polity. Xiao gives out the impression that he regrets that the West is not familiar with the authentic name of the Party in Mandarin, gongchandang.

I find this opening quite intriguing and believe that it deserves further elaboration.

As a student of contentious politics, as well as discursive and symbolic conflicts, I know one that names, and moreover, the act of naming itself, are not innocent. To name is to call into being; to name is to paint, add values, and contextualize. Moreover, nomen est omen – often names are a form of self-fulfilling prophecy and inform the image in the eyes of the beholder.

For Westerners, as Xiao argues, the term “Communist” is puzzling and uneasy to use. The majority of the Americans highly loathe it due to the legacy of the Cold War state propaganda, while in Europe, and especially in the post-communist countries, communism is often considered synonymous the totalitarian past [some countries have outlawed the use of communist insignia, and equated communist ideology to Nazism/Fascism]. In China, on the other hand, the term has had a flexible meaning; yet, today, it is the CPC and its ideology that gets the credit for the “economic miracles” and the multifaceted transformation of the country [and arguably so, it deserves it]. On the other hand, intellectuals and radical leftists from around the globe, very often talk of communist ideals that have never been attained in practice, at the same time condemning all self-labeled communist regimes for polluting the communist narrative and name.

There are several other instances in which the question of names and meanings can be framed. When foreigners use the form Communist Party of China, for instance, they might have different cultural/political conceptions of China in mind, especially compared to the perceptions of the Chinese. If they use the formulation Chinese Communist Party, then, based on communist parties experiences elsewhere, we might just ask – is the Party more Chinese or more Communist? Finally, we can even debate what the term Party itself in the case of the CPC means, as we are talking about an organization with more than 80 million members [for illustration: if the CPC was a country in the EU, it would share the #1 spot in terms of population with Germany]. In that sense, there is little ground to compare it with any other party in the world.

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And now back to the article and the role and the prospects of the CPC.

Op-eds published in China Daily often serve as indicators of the direction of official politics. Recently, the paper has proliferated several introspective articles written by high-profile figures, a good deal of which examine the work and the prospects of the CPC. What can be concluded from all of them, is that the CPC undergoes an important discursive transition. As Xiao points out, for the most part of the history of the Party, it has had the role of a revolutionary force, a reformist organization and an emergency task force that was there to react whenever a crisis happened [and there were plenty of them]. Such a role called for adopting more pragmatic approach to politics, which so far has worked perfectly for CPC. However, in the new chapter of its history, the CPC now governs a stabilized Chinese state. As such, it slowly abandons the proactive crisis-solving approach, and focuses on devising stable state-institutions that will be prepared to cope with the challenges ahead by themselves. It changes its perception, from ad-hocism, towards long-term stability and lasting development.