The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers »

Richard McGregor is a reporter for the Financial Times and the publication's former China bureau chief. He was born in Sydney, Australia, where he also started his career as a journalist. He has reported from North Asia for nearly two decades and currently lives in London.

China's political and economic growth in the past three decades is one of astonishing, epochal dimensions. The country has undergone a remarkable transformation on a scale similar to that of the Industrial Revolution in the West. The most remarkable part of this transformation, however, has been left largely untold—the central role of the Chinese Communist Party.

As an organization alone, the Party is a phenomenon of unique scale and power. Its membership surpasses seventy-three million, and it does more than just rule a country. The Party not only has a grip on every aspect of government, from the largest, richest cities to the smallest far-flung villages in Tibet and Xinjiang, it also has a hold on all official religions, the media, and the military. The Party presides over large, wealthy state-owned businesses, and it exercises control over the selection of senior executives of all government companies, many of which are in the top tier of the Fortune 500 list.

In The Party, Richard McGregor delves deeply into China's inner sanctum for the first time, showing how the Communist Party controls the government, courts, media, and military, and how it keeps all corruption accusations against its members in-house. The Party's decisions have a global impact, yet the CPC remains a deeply secretive body, hostile to the law, unaccountable to anyone or anything other than its own internal tribunals. It is the world's only geopolitical rival of the United States, and is steadfastly poised to think the worst of the West.

In this provocative and illuminating account, Richard McGregor offers a captivating portrait of China's Communist Party, its grip on power and control over China, and its future.

The Washington Post - Andrew Higgins

…a lively and penetrating account of a party that, since its founding in Shanghai as a clandestine organization in 1921, has clung to secrecy as an inviolable principle…McGregor adds flesh to dry bureaucratic bones through interviews with Chinese who know the system from the inside…

The Party

List of Illustrations

Prologue

1 The Red Machine: The Party and the State 1

2 China Inc.: The Party and Business 34

3 The Keeper of the Files: The Party and Personnel 70

4 Why We Fight: The Party and the Gun 104

5 The Shanghai Gang: The Party and Corruption 135

6 The Emperor is Far Away: The Party and the Regions 170

7 Deng Perfects Socialism: The Party and Capitalism 194

8 Tombstone: The Party and History 229

Afterword 263

Acknowledgements 274

Notes 277

Index 294