The politics and risks of substituting “CCP” for “China”
“CCP” is used inaccurately and for domestic political attacks
Last week, Washington Post political columnist Philip Bump penned a piece entitled “The rise of ‘Chinese Communist Party’ as a pejorative,” in response to the frequent invocation of “CCP” at the Trump-less Republican debate on September 27.
The critical reaction was to Bump’s use of “pejorative.” Fellow Post columnist Josh Rogin wrote, “Hey guys, the term “Chinese Communist Party” is not pejorative. It’s the correct name of the org that runs China’s government.” China watcher Michael Sobolik challenged the presumption it was a “political dog whistle.” Rogin and political writer Jonah Goldberg defended “CCP” as properly distinguishing between the Chinese government and people. Both Goldberg and Senator Mike Lee defended “pejorative” given the brutality of the CCP over decades.
While there is merit here, both Bump and his critics are not telling the whole story and get some things wrong.
In his piece, Bump looks at the increases in mentions of “CCP” as a political matter in relation to China, but neglects to connect it to the domestic political motivation – namely, the trend among Republicans to attach the label “communist” to both Democrats and the Chinese, intentionally conflated for political purposes. More on this later, but first a look at accuracy.
CCP runs the state but it is NOT the state
“Chinese Communist Party” can be an accurate descriptor. It can be the preferred term when analyzing leadership and power dynamics and decision-making. Rogin is correct: it is the name of the organization that runs China’s government.
But the CCP is not a synonym for the state. It is the People’s Republic of China that is the member of the United Nations and a permanent member of the Security Council, not the CCP. The CCP carries no responsibilities as a state and incurs no obligations under international law. The PRC does.
This is a key point. If someone insists that the CCP is obligated under international law to prevent genocide in Xinjiang or to allow due process in trials, they are wrong. Such inaccuracy undermines the effort to bring international law to bear to address these abuses.
This asymmetry is visible is the lopsided name of the House’s Select Committee on the Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party. They are not equivalent. One is a country and one is party. It’s like highlighting a competition between apples and oranges on which is a better citrus fruit.
It can also result in bad legislating. Take for example an amendment by Rep. Michelle Steel which read, “the United States should seek to require the Chinese Communist Party to match emission cutting targets established by the United States.” Emissions aren’t measured by party, they are calculated on a national basis. It should have read “PRC.” Despite this error, the amendment was adopted by the House.
“CCP” can distinguish between leaders and the Chinese people
“CCP” can be a helpful term for this purpose. It is an understandable reaction to the “China virus” language deployed by President Trump as he sought to deflect fault from his Administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, and the ensuing rise in violence against people of Chinese descent.
And yet, CCP is not synonymous with government leaders. There are 98 million members of the Chinese Communist Party. Many of these are regular folks – engineers, actors, accountants, doctors – who join the Party because it is likely essential to professional advancement. As Jimmy Chien of the U.S. Air Force writes in warning against conflating China with CCP, “The Chinese people have a long history of independent thoughts and actions, far removed from centralized authority. Most identify with their locale—village, city, or province—rather than the state at large.” Rank-and-file Party members are not making key national decisions. There remains a good reason to refer to the “Chinese government” or “PRC” when referring to CCP leaders acting in their governmental capacity.
Why is China the only country labeled by its ruling party?
A couple years ago a Republican colleague told me that the documents we were working on had to refer to “CCP” in all instances “because it accurately describes who wields power.” I asked him why he doesn’t do the same for other one-party states, substituting “Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party” for Syria, “United Russia” for Russia or “Rwandan Patriotic Front” for Rwanda. He didn’t have an answer.
I wondered whether this usage was reserved for one-party Communist states. Nope. Of all the bills introduced since 2019 that mention “China,” 23 percent use “CCP.” Compare that to bills about other Communist states. Zero bills about North Korea, Vietnam or Laos cite the name of the ruling Communist party, and only one of the Cuba bills refers to the Communist Party of Cuba.
Why only China? Arguably it’s a legacy of the cringy term “ChiCom” (which a policy staffer used with me just last year!). Perhaps it’s just because China is a hot topic. Either way, the fact that China is the only country referred to by its ruling party is intellectually inconsistent and raises the question of whether something else is going on.
“Communist” is being deployed to conflate China and Democrats
The answer is domestic politics.
Simply put, Donald Trump and other Republican politicians have increasingly used the word “communist” to refer to Democrats, especially in response to his multiple indictments.
Bump uses data to show that the jump in utterances of “CCP” started when Trump started blaming Chinese Communists for the virus in 2020, notably on GOP-friendly Fox News. Later that year, Trump called his political opponent’s running mate a “communist.” This is not a coincidence.
Using “communist” to conflate China’s authoritarian rulers legitimate domestic opponents is not just mere political rhetoric. It is potentially dangerous. This is because both are framed as existential threats. An existential struggle by definition is a destroy-or-be-destroyed conflict, as Trump says when speaking here of Democrats. Whether foreign or domestic, the use of existential language can lead to extremist behavior and violence or conflict.
I think back to my Republican colleague’s insistence on using “CCP” in our work. Was it based on fealty to accuracy? No, not when it was used improperly to describe the state. Was it based on a principle of nomenclature for one-party states? No, not when the same isn’t done for North Korea or Cuba.
What I must conclude is that “CCP” had become the accepted if not desired term of usage, accuracy be damned, in a conservative political ecosystem that has found it useful to conflate a foreign adversary with domestic political rivals. I don’t expect politics to be polite. But I do ask those who say “Chinese Communist Party” to think carefully about whether it is being used inaccurately or scurrilously, and the potential consequences of doing so.
Notes
There is a further argument over whether it is better to refer to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or the Communist Party of China (CPC), as discussed here. The latter is its official name, and avoids a complication of using “Chinese” as a modifier – namely, that there are millions of people in the PRC (Tibetans, Uyghurs, etc.) who are not Chinese. CPC, however, would create additional problems in Congress as that is the acronym for the Congressional Progressive Caucus (although some may want to conflate them!).
Here is a handy style guide for “PRC, China, CCP or Chinese?”