The Party and Private Entrepreneurs in the PRC

Abstract

In July 2001, Party Secretary Jiang Zemin announced that private entrepreneurs,
 among other 'outstanding' representatives of the new social elites, were welcome
 to join the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The move led to controversial
 ideological debates as it was widely interpreted as a clear signal that the communist
 party was finally turning capitalist. Things become less clear, however, when we
 look not so much at ideologies but at the actual facts. Realizing how little we
 know about the reality of relations between the CCP and private entrepreneurs,
 the aim of the paper is two-fold: The first is to collect and critically assess the
 information available on current developments of the 'private economy' (a vague
 notion in itself), and on the proportion of entrepreneurs who are already CCP
 members. Second, based on this analytical 'deconstruction' of statistical data and
 categories, the article delineates motives and strategies that might lie behind the
 new policy of formally admitting private entrepreneurs into the party. As will be
 argued, one important reason could be that the CCP, by co-opting entrepreneurs,
 attempts to (re-)gain access to the ever larger labour force employed in the growing
 non-public sector of the economy and thus to strengthen its organizational
 presence at the grassroots level. However, while we know something about the
 CCP's policy, much more needs to be known about the political preferences,
 attitudes and behaviour of private entrepreneurs. Therefore, instead of drawing
 macropolitical conclusions, the paper ends with an outline of relevant microscopic
 aspects of the relations between entrepreneurs and the CCP that deserve more indepth
 analysis in the future.