The CCP is a conservative party
To pretend otherwise undermines policy analysis and formulation
Yes, its name is the Communist Party of China (中国共产党). But much of its behavior (anti-LGBTQ, traditional gender roles, rejection of plurality, patriotic education, assertive nationalism and invocation of past glory) puts it on common ground with conservative parties around the globe. The CCP has become “CINO” -- Communist In Name Only.
And yet, U.S. politicians keep trying to make “communism” the core organizing principle of their policy approach to China. This is analytically unsound and can lead to misdirected policies.
Here’s a detailed look at the ways the Chinese Communist Party behaves like a conservative party, and how contemporary conservative parties behave like the CCP:
Anti-LGBTQ
A common feature of today’s conservative parties is non-acceptance, if not hostility toward, persons of “non-traditional” sexual identity, such as in Russia, Hungary, Italy and the United States. Same with the CCP. China’s government does not recognize the concept of LGBTQ in its law. In recent years, the CCP has “continued a crackdown on LGBTQ persons” as the party emphasizes traditional gender roles. In recent years the CCP has forced the closure of Beijing’s LGBTQ center and the cancellation of the Shanghai pride parade.
Denial of marriage equality
Conservatism valorizes “traditional” institutions, often employing the exclusion principle in their defense. Like most conservative parties, the CCP does not apply equality to the institution of marriage. PRC law does not recognize same-sex marriage. In 2019, a parliament spokesman said that "limiting marriage to a relationship between a man and a woman will remain China's legal position." This puts the CCP in the same camp with conservative parties in Germany (AfD), Hungary (Fidesz), India (Bharatiya Janata Party), Spain (Vox), Russia (United Russia), Japan (Liberal Democratic Party), Austria (Freedom Party) Poland (Law and Justice) and the United States (Republican Party),
Promotion of masculinity
Difficulties for LGBTQ persons in China, including cases of bullying and harassment, have come in part because the CCP’s promotion of masculinity. In 2021 China's Education Ministry published plans to "cultivate masculinity" in school-age boys following a CCP official’s call to help boys who have become too delicate, timid and effeminate. Muscular masculinity is a ubiquitous component of the public personae of conservative party leaders like Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Silvio Berluscone, Viktor Orbán and Geert Wilders. Echoing the CCP’s elevation of masculine virtues, a conservative U.S. senator wrote a book entitled, “Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs.”
Traditional gender roles
Under its communist ideology, the CCP is theoretically committed to female equality. While women have experienced greater freedoms than in the past, in reality their situation has been far from equal. Under Xi Jinping, however, the CCP has downplayed gender equality and instructed women to focus on getting married and having babies, offering financial incentives to do so. “We should actively foster a new type of marriage and childbearing culture,” said Xi in 2023. This attitude aligns CCP with other conservative parties and societies that emphasize “traditional” roles for men and women in families.
Pro-natalism
In the past the CCP imposed a one-child birth limit to reduce population growth. Now they’ve pivoted 360° and are pushing families to have more children. Whereas the CCP once used forced abortion and sterilization nationwide to enforce its policy, these abuses are now mostly reserved for Uyghurs. The CCP’s shift to potentially coercive “forced procreation” measures, rather than increasing immigration to deal with demographic challenges, while restricting births among a disfavored ethnic minority, raises the specter of racial purity motivating the Party’s actions. We see this race-favoritism approach of banning immigrants and promoting native birth among conservative parties in Hungary, Russia, Italy, Poland and the United States, where the conservative party is both resolutely anti-immigrant and has rationalized banning abortion as a solution to increasing domestic births (which is succeeding).
Assertive nationalism
By definition, communist ideology is universal and international. The CCP has abandoned any pretense of this creed and put Chinese nationalism at the core of its identity and political program. Xi Jinping came into office under the “Chinese Dream” slogan promoting rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Many CCP policies are coded with “Chinese characteristics.” This nationalism has accelerated the PRC’s aggressive territorial claims in the South and East China Seas and along the Indian and Bhutanese borders. We see it operationalized through often vicious nationalist discourse online. This puts the CCP in cozy company with other conservative parties that have employed hyper-nationalism as a political weapons, including in India, Hungary and Poland, Russia, Italy, and the United States, where it manifests in Donald Trump’s America First theme. Super-nationalist Chinese Wolf Warrior rhetoric, such as that of Hu Xijin, has far more in common with Trump’s pugilist language than it does with something you might read in Jacobin magazine.
Glorification of a national past
Conservative parties, almost by definition, promote political narratives grounded in a nation’s idealized past -- eras of glory, tradition and virtue that have been lost (blamed on reformers and liberals) that the parties promise to revive. This concept is at the heart of Xi Jinping’s program: “Realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is the greatest dream of the Chinese nation in modern times." CCP rhetoric glorifies China’s 5,000-year civilization and extols the values of Confucius and Mencius to justify its own policies. This is far from typical future-oriented communist ideology that speaks of progressive revolution toward a utopian state. We see obvious parallels of the CCP approach among conservatives in Russia, India, Hungary, and the United States, where then-President Trump created a “1776 Commission” to “Restore Understanding of the Greatness of the American Founding” and defended Confederate statues.
Rejection of pluralism, promotion of assimilationism
Conceptually, communist ideology supports egalitarianism and pluralism. The PRC codified these principles by recognizing, on paper, ethnic groups (minzu) with equal status. It granted ethnic minority groups autonomous areas with rights to their own language and culture. These laws were honored in the breach of course, but the theory is there. Under Xi Jinping’s "national rejuvenation" theory, however, the CCP has abandoned this concept by adopting the so-called second-generation ethnic policy which pushes assimilation (“sinicization”) of ethnic groups into the Han majority’s culture and institutions. Under this approach, the CCP has been stripping the language rights of Tibetans, Uyghur, Southern Mongolians and others.
The CCP’s assimilationist policies align it with the majoritarian approach of conservative parties around the world. In Brazil, former president Jair Bolsinaro stripped indigenous peoples of their rights. Israel’s Likud-led government passed the Nation-State law to give Jews greater rights and status than non-Jewish citizens in Israel. The Hindu nationalism promoted by the BJP is dispensing with India’s identity as a secular state in favor of a Hindu-dominated one, leading to discrimination and violence against Muslims and Christians.
Ironically (or maybe not), CCP thinkers modeled their assimilationist policy on the United States’ “melting pot” idea, even as Americans struggle with the question of whether this assimilationist framework serves to perpetuate structural racism. In response to a public outcry against racial inequities in the wake of the George Floyd murder and increased awareness of structural racism though efforts like the “1619 Project,” the conservative party in the United States has redoubled its rejection of pluralism and defense of the majority ethnic and religious group’s traditional control of national narratives in an American analog to Xi Jinping’s “Sinicization.” Republican-run legislatures are rushing to block diversity initiatives (DEI) at schools and workplaces. It rejects the existence of structural racism and turn a term for awareness of racial injustice (“woke”) into a pejorative.
Patriotic education
In response to the debate over structural racism and the 1619 Project, President Trump launched an effort to promote “patriotic education,” using the power to the state to create a governmental “1776 Commission” to reinforce a majoritarian narrative of national identity. Thus, Trump aligned his conservative party with the CCP which also uses the power to promote “patriotic education” to reinforce a majoritarian narrative of national identity.
What this means:
Despite all this, U.S. policymakers treat China as a communist state as if it were from a 1950s time capsule. I’ve had colleagues (in the 2020s!) say “ChiComs.” The House put “CCP” in the title of its Select Committee (despite the nonequivalence.) Former NSC staff Matt Pottinger testified before it on “The Chinese Communist Party’s Threat to America.” He and its soon-to-be-former chairman Congressman Mike Gallagher authored an article in Foreign Affairs that is a piece of Cold War nostalgia if not fetishism.
None of this is to deny the fact that the Communist Party of China runs a one-party authoritarian state that is the worst human rights violator in the world. This is a direct legacy of the CCP founded and run by Mao Zedong. But the PRC is not the only authoritarian state in today’s world and none of its authoritarian behaviors are unique to China. (Brutal authoritarianism in the China context isn’t even unique to the CCP; recall the despotic rule of the KMT under Chiang Kai-shek.) Thus, as we study today’s rise of authoritarianism, including the PRC’s role in it, it is methodologically insufficient and analytically unsound to treat “communist” China as separate or distinct from other authoritarian actors around the world.
Again, it is accurate to call China’s ruling party the CCP – that’s its name. But we don’t claim that there is democracy in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. We don’t pretend that the conservative parties of Japan (Liberal Democratic Party) and Australia (Liberal Party) are on the left because of their name. So why do politicians continue to assert that today’s CCP represents communist ideology? Because they deploy it as weapon to smear domestic political opponents, as I wrote about here. Take for example former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s effort to link the CCP to domestic policies Republicans don’t like (racial justice, welfare state, immigration). Yeah, I get it, that’s politics, whatever.
But when it comes to making policy, we must base our data collection, analysis and policy formulation on behavior, not labels. On facts, not wishcasting. And the fact is that the way that the CCP behaves today, especially in matters of social and cultural governance, parallels behaviors we observe in conservative parties in many countries around the world. If we want the United States government to be smart in its policy approach to China, we need to account for this reality, and base our policy on CCP as it is rather than the CCP we chose to see.
I’m a Chinese dissident and I have lived in the States and used to label myself as a democrat. Things has changed a lot after all these years. It makes more sense that you writing to attack conservatives and republicans by lumping them with the CCP than explaining why CCP is bad. People are not stupid and they can see liberals make an equivalent amount of bad judgments about the CCP, if not, more than your so-called conservatives ever did. Conservatives doesn’t make you an autocrat.
Mike Pompeo advocated for a lot on how the Chinese people are different from the CCP. Trump’s China adviser even dubbed a video asking Chinese people to look for freedom and democracy. That’s what people like me saw they did for “politics.” And people like you who are most likely an American democrat is a lot more about politics, scapegoating, and gaslighting the public.
I can tell who you are writing this for, but the more you write like it as if you are trying to imply Biden and the the democrats are the only correct option, the more you are exposing a democrat one-party rule for the future. Conservatives are as democratic as liberals. CCP is not democratic and things they do are a lot worse than conservatives and liberals combined.