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By Root 470 0

POD in 2000 admitted that the party’s rural cells had neglected party-building and seldom organized political activities or recruited new members. A survey of one prefect in Shanxi in 1998 found that seven hundred villages had not recruited a single member in three years. Another survey of 620 villages in 2000, in the same prefect, showed that none of them had recruited a party member in the previous three years.84 The CCP’s village cells, the party’s most important grassroots organization, have deteriorated as well. From 1994 to 2000, the party was forced to fix 356,000 of the rural CCP cells that were characterized as weak or paralyzed. They represented half the CCP village cells.85 A report by the Zhejiang CCP POD disclosed that about 56 percent of the party’s village cells in the province were rated third-grade (ineffective and paralyzed). The party’s rural members appear to have grown disillusioned and demoralized as well. One survey of party members in Sichuan showed that 26 percent of them did not support or trust the party and would like to drop out of the party.86

In urban areas, the CCP’s organizational integrity has also suffered from the effects of market reforms. The mass bankruptcy of SOEs since the mid-1990s has led to tens of thousands of factory closures—and the effective dismantling of the CCP party organizations in these SOEs. In Liaoning, one of the provinces hardest hit by mass closures of SOEs in the 1990s, 80,000 CCP members were among the 680,000 workers employed in closed or semiclosed factories. Almost 50,000 CCP members were among the laid-off and furloughed workers. Most laid-off CCP members lost contact with their former CCP organizations; only 8 percent applied for activity passes that would allow them to maintain organizational contact with their former CCP cells.87 In an internal assessment in 2000, the Shanxi CCP POD reported that “in nonoperating SOEs, the party organization is almost in a state of collapse. It docs not conduct organizational activities or recruit new members. It cannot even collect party dues.”88

At the same time, the CCP has been stymied in penetrating the private sector.89 In 2000, the CCP did not have a single member in 86 percent of the 1.5 million private firms and was able to establish cell organizations in only 1 percent of the private firms.90 China’s newly established professional service firms—such as law and accounting firms and private medical clinics—and professional associations also have not been receptive to the party’s attempts to attract new members.91 The party’s efforts to set up its organizational presence in foreign-invested business have fared no better.92 The reality of a “party-unfriendlv” marketplace has led even the members of the ruling elite to question the need for the CCP to have an organizational presence in nonstate firms. A survey of six hundred officials in 2000 found that almost 40 percent thought private firms do not need party cells.93 The long-term political implications of the CCP’s failure to penetrate the private sector spell trouble for the party because foreign-invested firms and domestic private firms have become the main source of employment while the payrolls in SOEs have been shrinking. The number of employees in private, foreign, and collective firms in 2002 almost equaled that in SOES.94

Internal Corruption

Internally, the CCP has been weakened by pervasive corruption and loss of ideological beliefs.95 Far from being a monolithic Leninist party with tight internal discipline, the CCP in reality suffers from a serious breakdown of organizational discipline and norms due to patronage and institutionalized inability to enforce its own rules. As described in Chapter 4, because of the concentration of power in the hands of lower-level party functionaries in the reform era, these officials have acquired the ability to build mini-patronage machines inside the party that serve their individual needs, rather than the CCP’s collective interests. The widespread practice of selling government appointments is a typical manifestation