Through the Past Darkly: Culture and Practice of the Chinese Communist Party

Little could the founders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have known that they were setting in motion one of history’s greatest revolutionary movements. A party that would seize power and, despite self-inflicted setbacks, one hundred years later would develop an economic juggernaut to cause the United States of America to view China as the greatest geo-political rival.

Are there lessons to be learned from this revolutionary history that guide the CCP’s actions today? The founders may have been baffled by the role of private capital, engagement with the global economy, and that the party no longer portrays itself as representing a radical break with the past.

Yet, while much has changed, there is important continuity in the practice and the culture of the party. It is an organization and propaganda party; an infallible and autonomous party; a controlling party; a collectivist party; an adaptable and flexible party; and a global party.

Anthony Saich is the director of the Rajawali Foundation Institute for Asia and Daewoo Professor of International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School. In addition, he is a guest professor at the School of Public Policy and Management at Tsinghua University, China. He also advises a wide range of government, private, and nonprofit organizations on work in China and elsewhere in Asia.

Saich was a trustee member of the National Committee on US-China Relations (2014-20), is a board member of AMC Entertainment Inc. and International Bridges to Justice and was the Chair of the China Medical Board (2015-2019). Previously, he was the representative for the Ford Foundation’s China Office from 1994 to 1999. Prior to this, he was director of the Sinological Institute at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

His current research focuses on politics and governance in post-Mao China and philanthropy in China. His most recent books include From Rebel to Ruler. One Hundred Years of the Chinese Communist Party (2021); Finding Allies and Making Revolution. The Early years of the Chinese Communist Party (2020); Governance and Politics of China (Fifth edition, forthcoming); Institutional Change and Adaptive Efficiency. A Study of China’s Hukou System Evolution (2023).

Chair: Sofia Graziani (School of International Studies - University of Trento)