Nilesh Jasani's Reviews > The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers

Reading The Party about a decade since its publication throws good light on issues raised by perennial China skeptics. The book is informative in its details on CCP's hold over life and everything else in China. Its absolutism is laudatory at a level, even though most readers will wonder if the author - and similar commentators - would apply the same brush to nations and governments strategically more important to their host nations.

The main conclusions are elsewhere. There is no dearth of experts uneasy with the Chinese ways ever since its growth started drawing their attention, particularly from the Tiananmen protests. Almost all have forecasted an imminent political and economic collapse stressing the unsustainability of the Chinese ways while excessively drawing on the mistakes of the Mao times.

China will have ups and downs in the years ahead. The downcycles will be different from those elsewhere, even if equally or more/less painful, characterized by the Party's unique structure. And yet, three things are lost in the analysis of the kind presented in the book.

One, every system in the world is unique and causes its community to go through its distinctive cycles. This is not to say some systems are not more wrong, but a perspective on any success matter to analyze any predicted doom. None of the forecasted collapses of China have come to a pass so far. Books of the kind must discuss what has allowed the party to go on so long before turning to incremental changes that could lead to a complete collapse from now.

Two, Xi Jinping's era further solidifies that the Party continues to shift. This is not a hindsight analysis, but even when the book was written, it was clear that the 2010 CCP was utterly different from the one in 1995, 1979, or 1965, as it is now from 2010. It is important to recount events and disasters of the previous fifty years but the author - and many others - excessively use them to give their interpretations of reality now.

Three, some things on human rights and individual freedoms are wrong absolutely. End results in economic or political successes should not be used to either justify them or predictions of failures to announce their futility. Champions of such causes, however, always bear the burden of proving their credentials that they are not prejudiced. The book fails to establish this.

In conclusion, the book is a helpful read to understand the pitfalls of standard China analysis we see in abundance these days.