3

The Chinese Communist Party as a Global Force

Frank N. Pieke¹

Introduction: Beyond Soft, Hard and Sharp Power

Interest in and concern over Chinese influence abroad have grown exponentially in recent years. The greater significance of China is a matter of much more than the growth of its economy. Under President Xi Jinping (习近平), the country is emerging as a superpower with global ambitions and a rapidly escalating rivalry with the United States. In this new geopolitical climate, facts or suspicions of Chinese influence or even interference abroad feature very prominently. In these discussions, the whole gamut of influence, interference and even sabotage is often lumped together. Chinese ‘soft power’, ‘public diplomacy’ (e.g. Confucius Institutes, Chinese cultural centres, support for Chinese-language media) and the activities and expressions of Chinese embassies and diplomats are certainly not always innocent. However, they are of a different order than the genuinely disruptive activities that China engages in, such as disinformation (‘fake news’) campaigns, cyberattacks, bribery or threats against politicians, espionage, and the theft of civil, military or ‘dual use’ technology.

The concept of soft power in international relations was developed as the opposite and counterpart of hard power (Nye 2004). The latter involves methods to coerce foreign actors to submit to a country’s wishes – against their will if necessary. By contrast, the original thrust of the concept of soft power focused on the influence of culture, values and contact in positively shaping opinions and attitudes regarding a country. However, when the Chinese authorities discovered this American concept of soft power in the early 2000s, they made it an instrument of statecraft and public diplomacy: the party-state develops the narratives, dominates and directs the actors involved, and attempts to control the content and flow of information. This approach is intended to enable China to develop and transmit long-term, well-coordinated and comprehensive public diplomacy policies and unified messages (Cao and Zhao 2013; d’Hooghe 2014).

More recently, in the context of the alarmist debate on Chinese influencing, the concept of ‘sharp power’ has come into vogue. Sharp power occupies the space between soft and hard power, referring to activities aimed at ‘piercing, penetrating or perforating the political and information environments in targeted countries’ (Walker and Ludwig 2017, 13). Even more than soft power, Chinese sharp power is state-driven, seeking to exploit the openness and free flow of information in democratic countries to abuse and even undermine the target country’s values and policies (Benner et al. 2018; Brady 2017; Diamond and Schell 2018; Joske 2020; Sahlins 2015).

Presenting China’s growing international impact as influence, influencing and interference abroad frames its rise as a disruptive force, and implicitly or even explicitly in breach of the international order and rules. Such a representation fails to recognise that the rise of any major power will, to a greater or lesser degree, upset the apple cart, and that the behaviour of such a disruptive new power to a large extent mirrors that of other major powers that came before it. British colonialism in the nineteenth century and American hegemony in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries were also violently disruptive. Britain and the US only came to be seen as bearers of the legitimate world order after they had set the rules and created the institutions that other, lesser powers had to live by.

This chapter is intended as a small contribution towards viewing the changing world order from a Chinese rather than an American, or more broadly Western (including Australia and New Zealand), perspective. Other countries may see certain of China’s actions as examples of its unwillingness to play by the rules, but these same actions often look very different when viewed from a Chinese perspective. Focusing on a hugely important aspect of China’s global impact that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) calls its ‘organisational capacity’ (zuzhili, 组织力), and what I call its organising power, I will show that the CCP does not simply seek to disrupt and meddle in other countries’ affairs, but to create enclaves abroad that are drawn back into China’s own system. The CCP as a global force is not simply destructive; rather, it intends to remould the world to its own image. I argue that denunciations of Chinese influencing and interference largely miss (or dismiss) this point, and, as a result, only see China as a force that has to be resisted, contained and, if possible, rolled back. Instead, other powers are well advised to try to make smart decisions – while it is still possible – about how to direct and shape this emerging reality in ways that serve their interests and minimise the damage.

Rather than being a part of the CCP’s foreign influencing or interference strategy, the CCP’s overseas organisational power is driven principally to counter the dangers of what Ruben Gonzalez has termed the ‘decentred internationalization of the Chinese state’– that is, processes of localisation of Chinese state agents under the impact of China’s global footprint and interests (Gonzalez-Vicente 2011: 403; see also Hameiri and Jones 2016).

As Chinese actors are increasingly present abroad, and as China constitutes a growing slice of the world economy, the CCP is confronted with challenges compelling it to extend the reach of its system abroad. The global reach of the CCP’s own organisation is not a devious plan to rule the world or make the world socialist, Chinese or both. It is an evolving response to, and aspect of, the requirements of the specific pattern of ‘Chinese globalisation’ and China’s emerging superpower role that quite literally and naturally makes the world more Chinese, just as, in the twentieth century, US hegemony made the world more American. For the CCP, China’s role in the world no longer provides incentives for convergence to liberal norms and institutions. Instead, the impact of its globalisation and superpower pulls China away from them, strengthening its own ‘neo-socialist’ order not only domestically but also, as we will see in this chapter, abroad (Pieke 2016; see also Economy 2018; McGregor 2019).

The extension of the CCP’s organisational power is very different from earlier efforts to export Maoist ideology and revolution. This was most obviously the case during the Korean War in the early 1950s, in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, and in Cambodia after the Vietnamese invasion in 1978. The CCP also materially supported Communist movements in Malaysia, Burma and Indonesia, and was a source of inspiration and ideological and strategic guidance for revolutionary movements across the world. Leaders of India’s Naxalites and Peru’s Shining Path, for instance, visited China and often stayed for extended periods of training (Cook 2014; Lovell 2019).

Overseas Party-building is also different from the established foreign practices of the CCP’s United Front Work Department (Tongyi zhanzheng gongzuo bu, Tongzhan bu 统一战争工作部、统战部) and International Liaison Department (Duiwai lianluo bu 对外联络部). The United Front Department’s responsibility for Chinese people overseas makes it a vital plank for China’s access to the capital and knowhow of foreign countries and markets (Groot 2004; Sapio 2019). More recently, united front work has become more pervasive both in China itself and among overseas Chinese communities, emphasising not just alliance and support, but insisting on the unity of the Chinese nation, loyalty to China and support for China’s system, model and politics (Pieke 2021).

The Party’s International Liaison Department, now more commonly referred to as the International Department, focuses on relations with foreign political parties and elites across the political spectrum. Under Xi Jinping, the department has further stepped up its work, for instance by organising major events in Beijing where members of the Politburo or even Xi Jinping himself have met with foreign delegates. The department is particularly active in Belt and Road countries, where its global goodwill strategy is complemented by the active dissemination of the experience and governance model of the CCP. This effort is not limited to countries ruled by an autocratic party, but also includes democracies or nominal democracies like Malaysia, South Africa, Fiji and Uganda. Together with these countries, the International Department coordinates training courses, visits and other exchange events. In 2022, the CCP and six sister parties in southern Africa opened the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School where members of foreign partner parties are taught the CCP’s organisation, Party-building, discipline inspection, and, more generally, about China’s model of governance and development (on the International Liaison Department, see Brady 2003; Eisenman and Heginbotham 2020, 302–3; Hackenesch and Bader 2020; Lovell 2019; Ngeow 2017, 2020; Shambaugh 2007).²

Recently, the United Front Department has taken on increasingly direct responsibility for China’s foreign influencing strategy as part of its overseas Chinese work (Joske 2020). In speeches given in 2015 and 2016, Xi explicitly connected the overseas Chinese work of the united front with his Belt and Road Initiative. Moreover, Xi Jinping imagines the overseas role of the United Front Department to be complementary to the work of the International Department (Sapio 2019).

However, overseas Party-building work takes place quite separately from the United Front and International departments, and is best seen as an open-ended process rooted in the domestic organisational practices of the Party. The logic behind this process is pretty consistent and driven by a combination of established Leninist principles and the CCP’s view of its leading role in Chinese politics and society (Koss 2021a).

The research for this chapter consists of a systematic search of Chinese-language academic literature and other Chinese written sources (e.g. CNKI Chinese-language publications database, Chinese media databases, policy documents, blogs, reports and other documents on WeChat official accounts).³ In 2020 and 2021, Nána de Graaff of the Free University in Amsterdam and I carried out interviews with Chinese-invested enterprises in the Netherlands in which we also asked about Party influence and Party-building work (Pieke and De Graaff 2022).

WeChat official accounts have unique added value. Managed by media outlets, academic institutions, governmental bodies and companies, their content is specifically targeted at subscribers rather than the general public. We found numerous sources on Party-building overseas on such accounts maintained by Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) that were intended for the use of Party members among their employees or as references for career Party members from their or other companies or organisations. WeChat official accounts provide information on Party-building considered inappropriate for the general public, which turned out to be invaluable for this research.

Our research used the Sogou WeChat (sougou weixin 搜狗微信) search engine to perform systematic searches of WeChat official accounts. We started our search using general terms such as ‘国外党建’ (guowai dangjian Party-building abroad) and ‘海外党建’ (haiwai dangjian, Party-building overseas). Then, narrowing down further, we continued with more specific searches focusing on two categories: 1) specific means and ways of Party-building overseas (‘互联网+’ (hulianwangjia, internet+), ‘海外党建6+1’ (haiwai dangjian 6+1, overseas Party-building 6+1), ‘企业文化’ (qiye wenhua, corporate culture)); 2) large SOEs that emerged as advanced examples of Party-building overseas, such as Sinopec or the China State Construction Engineering Corporation.

Many of the sources we used were written by Party cadres from SOEs abroad and almost certainly overstate the extent and successes of overseas Party work. Their authors have an obvious incentive to boast of their successes and hide their failures. However, we also found some publications based on Chinese publicly funded academic research projects on overseas Party-building. Much less bullish, these served as an important corrective (Feng 2020; Guo and Sun 2011a, 2011b; Ma 2017).

In addition, we also reviewed recent versions of the CCP Constitution, and general Party regulations, directives and guiding opinions related to Party-building, especially from the Central Organisation Department (Zhongyang zuzhi bu 中央组织部), to uncover the development and current trends of Party-building, both domestically and abroad.

Organising Power: Building the CCP Abroad

In 2017, Western media exposed the presence of a number of CCP ‘cells’ (branches) at universities abroad.⁴ Surprisingly, some Chinese newspapers also openly reported on this.⁵ The immediate consequence of these ‘revelations’ was simply that the CCP stopped publicising overseas Party work without any intention of actually putting an end to it. Nevertheless, in the Chinese literature, it is still not difficult to find ample evidence of the continued existence of active Party branches at foreign universities. In particular, Chinese universities with many student exchanges abroad often set up temporary Party branches among their students at foreign universities.⁶

According to Guo and Sun (2011b), Party-building work among Chinese students abroad goes back to at least 2006, when Beijing Union University (Beijing lianhe daxue 北京联合大学) established a Party branch for the 12 Party members among its students who went to study at the University of Paisley (now the Paisley Campus of the University of West Scotland). In 2011, such ‘basic party organisations’ had already been established at more than 10 other colleges and universities overseas.

Foreign Party branches among Chinese students function, to a large extent, using what is called the ‘internet+’ (hulianwangjia, 互联网+) method, which includes the use of social media, online meetings, and online teaching materials and courses. It remains an open question whether this kind of Party work among students has much substance. Guo and Sun’s (2011) research of a (small) sample of Party members among returned students in the Nanjing area showed that, even where overseas Party branches existed, daily Party organisational work almost never took place. Only 22 per cent of their respondents reported that their Party branch had relatively strong ‘cohesion and charisma’ (ningjuli he ganzhaoli 凝聚力和感召力; Guo and Sun 2011a, 2011b; see also Feng 2020). Conversely, it must be said that, for an institution such as the University of Defence Technology (guofang keji daxue 国防科技大学), Party branches help to ensure that travelling students return to China with the knowledge they have acquired (Joske 2018).⁷

The concept of Party-building (dang de jianshe 党的建设, dangjian 党建) is inherently political and strategic. In his 1939 essay ‘Introducing The Communist’, Mao Zedong (毛泽东) called for building a ‘Bolshevised Chinese Communist Party which is national in scale, has a broad mass character, and is fully consolidated ideologically, politically and organisationally’ (Mao [1939] 1967: 285).⁸ As one of the CCP’s three ‘magic weapons’ (san da fabao 三大法宝) for defeating the enemy in the Chinese Revolution, Party-building is the process by which the mass of Party members and cadres is transformed into a tool of the revolution.

In 1988, a Central Party-Building Work Leading Group (Zhongyang dang de jianshe gongzuo lingdao xiaozu, 中央党的建设工作领导小组) of the Politburo was established. Two of the deputy leaders of the leading group were the heads of the Central Discipline Inspection Commission (Zhongyang jilü jiancha weiyuanhui 中央纪律检查委员会) and the Central Organisation Department. The importance of this work is evidenced by the fact that both Hu Jintao (胡锦涛) and, later, Xi Jinping acted as head of the leading group in the years immediately preceding their elevation to CCP general secretary, the highest office in the land.⁹

Party-building refers to self-improvement activities undertaken to maintain what the Party considers to be its own unique nature. Party-building includes the full range of propaganda, education and training, organisational work, discipline inspection, mass organisations and united front work.¹⁰ Party-building also involves teaching, research and theory building, and is even a discipline at Party schools throughout the country.

Party-building specifically deals with the presence of the Party at the grassroots of society. Most importantly, Party work lifts the ‘party spirit’ (dangxing 党性) and strengthens ‘party discipline’ (dangji 党纪), thus aligning the Party’s members and cadres with the methods, work style, vision, goals and ideology of the centre. Party-building operates at the nexus of the Party’s external role and functions (‘the work of the Party’, dang de gongzuo 党的工作) on the one hand, and routine internal ‘party affairs work’ (dangwu gongzuo 党务工作) on the other. Party-building is how ‘the Party must manage the Party’ (dang yao guan dang 党要管党), bringing together ideology, organisation and political practice.¹¹ Party-building is, thus, where the Party becomes an instrument not just of governance, but also of political transformation in the pursuit of its ultimate goals and mission.

Over the past 15 years, Party-building efforts have been made to increase and strengthen the Party’s presence across Chinese society (Li 2019; McGregor 2010; Shambaugh 2008; Thornton 2012; Thornton, Chapter 2, this volume). Xi Jinping has further accelerated this process, increasing the direct political and administrative role of the Party, strengthening its presence and grip on government, the army, the judicial system, civil society and business (Economy 2018; Grünberg and Drinhausen 2019; Koss 2021b; McGregor 2019; Yan and Huang 2017). A key aspect of this approach is the principle of ‘strictly governing the Party’ (cong yan zhi dang 从严治党) in order to enhance the ‘organisational capacity’ (zuzhili 组织力) of the Party’s branches, strengthen the political function of branches and develop their role as a ‘battle fortress’ (zhandou baolei 战斗堡垒) in the consolidation of the Party’s long-term governance.¹²

The same principle and approach apply overseas. China’s increasing globalisation presents a number of particular challenges to the Party’s ambition to strengthen its grip. This includes not only the presence and activation of Party members within foreign organisations and companies present in China itself, an issue that recently has vexed a great many commentators on China,¹³ but also necessitates the management of Party members residing outside China. The number of Chinese students abroad has increased rapidly. State-owned institutions and companies increasingly have projects or investments outside China and send large numbers of their staff abroad. Recruitment agencies often send large groups of Chinese workers abroad on temporary contracts. In all these cases, Party members are among them.

Party-building work explicitly concerns members who, in principle, temporarily go abroad and not those who have emigrated permanently. The latter have to give up their membership or at least deactivate membership of their original branch in China, after which they become subject to the Party’s overseas Chinese policies run by the United Front Department. Party work abroad focuses particularly on members who work abroad for SOEs or large projects, and Chinese students on government scholarships and university programs or exchanges. There is, at present, little mention of Party work among those who have gone abroad under their own steam – that is, self-funded students and private businesspeople. However, private enterprises and their subsidiaries abroad have already been included in the CCP’s Party-building drive. In my most recent research on Party-building in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe, I have found evidence that, since 2017, some of China’s larger private enterprises have been compelled to both commit to Party-building abroad and to work with representatives of the Ministry of Commerce at Chinese embassies and consulates to promote Party-building among other Chinese enterprises abroad (Pieke and De Graaff 2022, ch. 6).

In the Chinese literature, the focus on Party work abroad is presented as following from the requirements of China’s ‘system’. SOEs and state-coordinated projects are seen as foreign extensions of China’s domestic economy and society and are, therefore, ‘part of the system’ (tizhinei 体制内) of the Party and the state, in which the private sector is increasingly incorporated as well. An article on building branches posted on the CCP members’ website (gongchandangyuan wang 共产党员网) formulated this as follows:

Although there are particularities in overseas party-building work, it is not treated differently (jingwai dangjian gongzuo sui you teshuxing, dan wu teshuhua 境外党建工作虽有特殊性、但无特殊化). Strengthening party building in overseas institutions of Chinese-funded enterprises is an inevitable requirement for promoting the institutionalisation and standardisation of overseas party-building work.¹⁴

Among Chinese-invested companies, the CCP’s explicit goal is to achieve ‘full coverage’ (quan fugai 全覆盖) and ‘no exception abroad’ (haiwai wu liwai 海外无例外) to Party-building work.¹⁵ During our research in the Netherlands in 2022, De Graaff and I found references to a commitment to overseas Party-building work for one-third (18 of 54) of the companies that were members of ACIEN, the most important Chinese business association in the country. Most, but not all, of these companies were state-owned or formerly state-owned, showing that foreign Party-building has indeed started to enter the privately owned sector (Pieke and De Graaff 2022, ch. 6).

The Ministry of Commerce plays an important role in foreign Party-building among Chinese-invested enterprises abroad. The ministry does so directly through its foreign trade and investment sections at Chinese embassies and consulates, and indirectly through organisations associated with it, in particular, the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade and the China Chamber of International Commerce. In those countries where it has an office or is otherwise active, the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade is responsible for facilitating the setting up of associations of Chinese enterprises and may even serve as a member of the management board of such organisations. Its work with such associations includes Party-building among firms that are members of particular associations (Pieke and De Graaff 2022, ch. 6).

In foreign contexts, the normal separation in China itself of Party leadership from operational leadership is often impractical. Abroad, a Party committee normally assumes direct operational responsibility, with the leader of a project or unit also acting as its Party secretary, although, in some large SOEs, career Party cadres are also stationed abroad. The Party committee leadership ensures the implementation of the decisions and requirements of the Party committee of the company headquarters.

Party members abroad will, in principle, remain members of the Party committee to which they belong in China. The committees of universities and companies are required to involve their members abroad as far as possible in their activities and, if possible, to organise activities abroad for them. In addition, members abroad must also remain locally involved in the Party. In theory, the Party committee of the local Chinese embassy or consulate is responsible for the members among the students and employees of companies and institutions. For workers sent abroad by recruitment agencies, the Party committee of the agency’s foreign representation is responsible for the members among them.¹⁶

In practice, these arrangements that date from 1984 do not appear to work properly. The great distance from China makes it very difficult for Party committees in China to involve their members abroad in their activities taking place in China. The Party committees of embassies and consulates often lack the necessary staff and, perhaps, also the incentive to keep in touch with members dispersed throughout their jurisdiction.

Party organisations often fail to adapt to the very different circumstances abroad, and as a result they atrophy. Due to frequent cross-border rotation, it is difficult to carry out Party member education or build branches systematically. In addition, members are affected by a ‘different social and cultural environment, resulting in different ways of living, thinking, and values’ (Jiang 2019).

From the Party’s point of view, there are a number of major problems with this. Without an active connection to a local branch, ‘only those party members with strong ideals and beliefs can resist the temptation’ of the ‘sugar-coated bullets’ (tangyi paodan 糖衣炮弹) of a Western lifestyle and ‘international hostile forces’.¹⁷ With the erosion of Party spirit and Party discipline, the Party is in danger of losing control of its own members. This can also be a problem for the members themselves. Party members who have to reactivate membership in their branch upon returning to China have been put behind by their time abroad. As a result, their careers and further development as Party members might suffer (Feng 2020).

To ensure that the Party does not lose control of its members abroad, other, more recent regulations or opinions have appeared that also refer to overseas Party work. The more general regulations on Party organisation in SOEs of 2004 include the observation that:

enterprises stationed abroad must establish party organisations and carry out party work in accordance with the number of party members, the local environment, and the actual situation of the enterprise, and the requirements of flexibility, simplicity, safety and confidentiality.¹⁸

A genuine increase in the emphasis on overseas Party work happened in 2016 with the issuance of a ‘leading opinion’ (zhidao yijian 指导意见) specifically on Party work among central enterprises abroad. Although this opinion has remained confidential, we have been able to piece together its gist from some of the articles that we have read.¹⁹

According to the Chinese literature, the opinion was issued to incorporate new models and methods of Party-building abroad that were already being experimented with. For example, the opinion authorises setting up a network of regional Party branches for which the Party committee of the local establishment of a large Chinese SOE is then responsible and takes on the coordination. This reduces the pressure on the staff of the local embassy and makes it possible to organise Party members dispersed across institutions that do not themselves have a Party organisation (Qiang 2018).

According to the 2016 regulations, Party work abroad should be based on five principles. The first is ‘upholding the general principle of the unwavering leadership of the Party’ (jianchi dang de lingdao bu dongyao yuanze 坚持党的领导不动摇原则). This principle provides the ideological motivation and political guarantee that the achievements of the overseas development of SOEs and institutions serve the construction and development of the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics (Liang 2019).

Overt Party activities are often not possible, especially in situations where, for example, employees of a Chinese company frequently work with non-Chinese colleagues. Moreover, many countries do not allow CCP activities. Covert Party activities are, therefore, often necessary, and methods based on the internet or social media must be used more than in China. Such activities take place on the basis of the second principle of overseas Party work, namely the ‘principle of the “five non-disclosures”’ (‘wu bu gongkai’ yuanze ‘五不公开’原则): non-disclosure of Party organisation, internal Party positions, Party member status, internal Party documents and internal Party activities in overseas Party-building activities. The five non-disclosures help overseas Party activities avoid ‘local political, economic, cultural, and religious risks’, and ‘provide protection against the long-term and stable development of overseas party building’ (Jiang 2019; Party Committee of China Electronics Import and Export 2018; Liang 2019).

In practice, the five non-disclosures mean that Party activities and discussion of Party work must never be held in the presence of foreign employees or visitors, nor should Party activities take place in public places outside the company premises and work sites. For the consumption of foreign employees and visitors, Party activities should be presented as a part of the company’s ‘corporate culture and team-building’ (qiye wenhua he tuandui jianshe 企业文化和团队建设; Liang 2019).

The CCP is aware of the security issues that come with the internet, particularly in times of increased geopolitical rivalry.²⁰ Facebook, Twitter and other foreign social media should be avoided. Instead, the company’s intranet and WeChat official account should be used. This has several other advantages, most importantly that their paperless nature facilitates compliance with the ‘five non-disclosures’.²¹ Further, foreign Party-building apps, such as Haiwai dangjian 6+1 (海外党建6+1, overseas Party-building app 6+1), help the Party to monitor whether individual Party members complete their daily Party work tasks, such as reading recent Party documents.²²

Covert practices are by no means limited to the operations of Chinese SOEs abroad. Among Chinese students, too, Party activities are carried out under other guises to avoid arousing suspicion or even censure. A recent academic article on foreign Party-building among students abroad observes that, ‘due to the special political environment overseas, some party members have kept “invisible” for a long time’. They:

rely on international student organisations to integrate the training of party members into [other] activities, such as Chinese cultural promotion and exchanges, international volunteer work, speech contests, debate contests, etc. (Feng 2020, 98)

This is confirmed by the earlier research of Guo and Sun, who write that:

grass-roots student party organisations (party branches or party groups) in foreign countries take into account the special and complex international environment of foreign countries when conducting activities. Most of them publicise, organise, and apply for venues and funds in the name of ordinary student associations. (Guo and Sun 2011a, 102)

The Party organisation of a SOE abroad is subject to the joint leadership of the Party committee of the headquarters of the company back in China and the Party committee of the Chinese embassy of the host country. This third ‘dual-leadership principle’ (gongtong lingdao yuanze 共同领导原则) stipulated in the 2016 confidential regulations goes back to 1984 (see note 19 above). The Party organisations of the headquarters back in China are responsible for the education, management and supervision of Party members and cadres abroad, and bear the costs of this and other Party-building work abroad. The Party committee of the embassy or consulate provides ‘political guidance in view of China’s foreign policies’. The embassy also carries out ideological and political work in case of ‘special situations or emergencies’ and facilitates exchanges on Party-building work with other locally present Chinese companies and units (Liang 2019).

The fourth principle of overseas Party work is ‘the principle of focusing on the centre and serving the overall situation’ (weirao zhongxin, fuwu daju yuanze 围绕中心、服务大局原则). This principle follows from article 33 of Chapter V of the CCP Constitution, which stipulates that the primary Party organisations in SOEs and collective enterprises shall carry out their work around the production and operation of enterprises. SOEs abroad face heavy responsibilities and high pressure in an even more complex market operation environment with higher risk than in China itself. Improving corporate efficiency, enhancing corporate competitiveness, and maintaining and increasing the value of state-owned assets are ‘the starting point and the end point’ of Party organisation work in enterprises abroad (Liang 2019).

The fifth and final principle of the 2016 regulations is the ‘principle of adapting measures to local conditions and being pragmatic and efficient’ (yin di zhi yi, wushi gaoxiao yuanze 因地制宜、务实高效原则). When Party organisations carry out Party-building work abroad, they should fully consider the actual situation and innovate Party organisation and member education and management methods, and, where needed, simplify operating procedures (Liang 2019).

The Party is concerned that the appeal of living abroad will alienate some of its members such that when they return to China they no longer prove reliable, and, moreover, that foreign operations should fit the overall plan and aims of the Party. The Party is well aware that Chinese companies and projects abroad have their own strategic objectives. If left unchecked, the Party believes that foreign operations will make Chinese companies increasingly global and less Chinese. Party-building and Party work in these companies and projects is intended to ensure that they do not stray too far from the plans of the CCP and its vision for the Chinese nation (Ma 2017).

Very interestingly, the final two principles of Party work abroad outlined above seem, at least partially, to negate this heavy-handed emphasis on politics and submission to the Party authorities back in China. They emphasise operational work, profitability and flexible adaption to local conditions. These two principles present Party work as a means of combating corruption and coordinating the activities of the Chinese embassy and other Chinese companies and institutions in a particular region. This is considered particularly important in less developed countries. Yet, even there, Party work is not intended as an instrument of interference in the affairs of other countries, but as a way to make Chinese companies and projects abroad more competitive and better run, operating according to the law and in tune with local circumstances (Ma 2017).

The importance of practical and operational considerations and the primacy of growing assets and making a profit is strongly borne out by the interviews with managers and directors of Chinese-invested firms that De Graaff and I conducted in the Netherlands. Our interviewees emphasised that commercial incentives and criteria (such as key performance indicators, annual targets, promotion opportunities and bonuses) guided the behaviour of company management. Strategies and control from the headquarters were repeatedly said to be issued predominantly or solely on that basis, rather than on the basis of any political or ideological considerations.

Nevertheless, SOEs and banks have one side that focuses on the business and another that focuses on the political; private companies, too, increasingly have to pay lip-service to politics. The tension in the 2016 regulations of political conformity and business success is visible in the incentives and behaviour of at least some SOEs and their Party committees. However, this duality mainly plays out at the corporate headquarters in China and does not concern the daily operational decisions of managers and directors of overseas subsidiaries. We have to conclude that, at least in the Netherlands, overseas Party-building is still very minimal and has, as yet, had little impact on strategy. Where Party-building happens, it mainly concerns the Party life of Party members themselves (Pieke and De Graaff 2022, chs 4, 6).

Overseas Party-Building in Practice

Party members abroad working together in a joint branch are often drawn from several different departments of a company or even from different companies. They, moreover, tend to travel frequently. Members of such a joint overseas branch participate in its study and education activities, but do not need to transfer their Party relationship to the overseas branch. Instead, the branch in their original unit conducts the management and evaluation of these members and collects their membership fee. This helps to organise members scattered over many projects and sites abroad without jeopardising the integrity of the CCP’s organisation and its grip over its members.

Online Party work plays an essential role abroad. Some Party committees distribute e-readers to their members with updates of the CCP Constitution and Party-building classics. Through the use of Party-building information apps and WeChat official accounts, foreign grassroots branches get access to the latest developments in the Party and national policies.

In addition to these explicitly political and organisational goals, foreign Party-building work has three further operational goals: 1) keeping Chinese and foreign employees happy and in line; 2) enhancing the competitiveness and management of foreign operations and projects; and 3) presenting a positive image of the company and China to the outside world. The ways that these goals play out in practice are often highly diverse, and the connection with Party work is not necessarily instinctively obvious. Indeed, Party-building often seems to serve as a shorthand or index that points to all that is good and reassuring about China, its system and – increasingly – its culture.

Enterprise Party organisations enforce Party discipline and rules, in the process also reducing the financial risks of their own external operations and the possible loss of state-owned assets. Party branches conduct education and promotion of ‘clean government’ to fight corruption and excessive lifestyles.

The Party is also involved in labour relations and management. This includes disease and safety management in high-risk countries. One article even reports on mundane facilities for workers and staff as the Party’s work:

In order to enrich the lives of employees, the regional company’s party committee has set up a staff food committee, life service station, fitness equipment room, leisure viewing room, shared book room, and a secretary’s chat room. (Liang 2019)

Party work also caters for the emotional needs of homesick employees, providing them with more opportunities to be involved with China, their hometown and relatives.

The relevance of Party-building work extends far beyond the company or project and is presented as a magic wand to strengthen China’s presence and impact abroad. Party work ensures that Chinese actors do not alienate foreign partners, governments or publics, creating a positive impression of China and Chinese enterprises among the local population (Gao 2020).

The composition of workers and staff on overseas projects is often very complex, with different cultures, beliefs and languages among local employees, high crime rates and conflicts between Chinese and local workers. In order to deal with these problems, Party work must focus on external relations, labour management and, more generally, on a ‘good external environment’. By establishing effective leadership and organisation, the Party can ensure the ‘smooth flow of internal government orders and orderly organisation’ and promote ‘the unity and vitality’ of overseas employees within the enterprise. Corporate Party organisations can also build ‘social and environmentally friendly corporate and community relationships’ (Gao 2020: 139; see also Ma 2017).

Overseas Party work therefore explicitly concerns itself with China’s larger aims in international politics, especially those that concern China’s public diplomacy and soft power strategies. The key concept here is ‘corporate culture’ (qiye wenhua 企业文化). As ‘the carrier of party-building work’ (dangjian gongzuo zaiti 党建工作载体), corporate culture is presented as having ‘the same effect as the Party’s role in stabilising the team and uniting people and is an effective entry for party-building work to serve production and operation’ (Liang 2019). Moreover, the label ‘corporate culture’ enables a Chinese company to carry out Party work overseas under the ‘five non-disclosures’ principle and avoid restrictions imposed by foreign governments on overt Party work (Zhang 2017).

Party-building as corporate culture is presented as an approach to tie Chinese and foreign employees together and to the company. Party work enhances the company’s ‘organising power’ and is used ‘as the core of team building’ of Party members, Chinese employees and foreign employees (Party Committee of China Electronics Import and Export 2019).

This use of Party-building is largely apolitical, aiming to use the Party’s organisational power to boost productivity. Concrete examples of how foreign employees are involved in Party work in Chinese companies are dumpling-making competitions, cultural and sports competitions, and other activities that enhance the integration of Chinese and foreign employees, such as regularly praising outstanding foreign employees and selecting foreign employees to visit or study in China.²³ Chinese companies now sometimes even give foreign employees the honorary title of ‘excellent employee’ (youxiu yuangong 优秀员工).²⁴

Only in a very few cases is mention made of the recruitment of Party members abroad. In 2012, the CCP deputy secretary of the China Metallurgical Group Corporation Committee required the whole corporation to encourage outstanding overseas employees to join the CCP.²⁵ At Shandong Luqiao Group, 16 people – presumably Chinese staff who had developed themselves overseas – were accepted as members of the CCP.²⁶ In Cambodia, the China Communications Construction Company’s Third Harbour Engineering Co. accepted several probationary members to the CCP.²⁷ In the UK, Party committees at Chinese-invested firms sometimes attempt to recruit members among locally hired Chinese employees, but tend to concentrate their recruitment efforts on expatriate employees from China. Proving their worth and loyalty to the Party in the relative shelter of a foreign posting, these younger Party members are groomed for a future Party-led career at the headquarters or perhaps elsewhere in China (Makarchev et al. 2022).

Another area where Party work involves foreign employees is corporate social responsibility. Foreign employees have a better understanding of the local situation, and can help with the corporate social responsibility strategy of Chinese companies and projects overseas. Corporate social responsibility involves the image of Chinese companies and their Chinese ‘brand’. Here, too, overseas Party work serves as a ‘red engine’ (hongse yinqing 红色引擎) that ‘transforms the political advantage of party building into a development advantage of participating in world market competition’, ensuring that this remains in tune with the objective of improving the image of Chinese companies abroad and the general thrust of China’s soft power strategy (Wu 2020, 19).

One company, China Construction Bridge (中建桥梁), openly argues that:

the project’s party branch has infused the ‘China Construction Bridge creed’ with traditional Chinese culture, while at the same time taking into account the restricted and concealed nature of overseas party-building activities.²⁸

This example also shows that the fusion of corporate culture and Party-building easily spills over into the use of the much broader concept of Chinese culture. Corporate culture is a vehicle ‘to tell the Chinese story well’ (jiang hao zhongguo gushi 讲好中国故事) and persuade foreign employees and others abroad that ‘the Chinese way’ (zhongguo daolu 中国道路) is why China achieved its economic success (Ma 2017). The connection between Party-building and corporate culture thus also serves a more generally positive appraisal of Chinese culture and the fusion of the Party’s legitimacy with Chinese civilisation.

Conclusion

Party-building is a crucial component of extending China’s system abroad. Party-building ensures that Chinese actors do not stray too far from the interests, plans and objectives of the CCP and its vision for the Chinese nation. Where overseas Party work is discouraged or even forbidden, the Party is happy to operate covertly or under the guise of team building and corporate culture.

Leninist principles of Party-building (e.g. cell-based, hierarchical, strict discipline and democratic centralism) increasingly shape Chinese globalisation. The same can be said of the covert nature of Party-building, which harks back to the Party’s roots as the secretive vanguard of a revolutionary movement. A century ago, in the first few years after the founding of the CCP in 1921, Leninism did not come ready-made, but had to be learned, adapted and then imposed upon an often intransigent, motley crowd of Party members and groups across China (van de Ven 1991). Now that the Party extends its reach across the globe, some of the same processes are at work again, albeit on a much larger, vastly better-funded, less-violently contested and much more professional basis.

However, it is important not to stretch the comparison with the CCP’s past too far. The overseas extension of the Party principally follows the globalisation of Chinese capital and serves a national agenda that sees China becoming a superpower and equal of the US by 2050. This is not the same as the military conquest and revolutionary takeover of China in 1949. It is also not the same as spreading Communist revolution across the world, as Mao’s China periodically, selectively and often half-heartedly attempted to do in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

Overseas Party-building has been born from finding solutions to a range of often contradictory, practical problems arising from China’s globalisation. The Party is learning by doing. Its overseas work varies vastly between countries and contexts and is rife with inconsistencies, chiefly because overseas Party work must cater to three quite different agendas. First, Party-building work helps Chinese businesses in their local operations. Second, Party-building work ties Chinese actors abroad to the system back home and the strategic interests of the CCP. Third, Party-building work contributes to China’s foreign policy strategy in promoting the ‘Chinese story’, the ‘Chinese way’, the ‘Belt and Road’ and the ‘shared community of mankind’.

A key tactic to combining these agendas is connecting Party-building work with ‘culture’. The specific characteristics of Party work are presented as an expression of what makes not just the Party, but China as a whole, different and competitive in the global arena. Depending on the context, ‘culture’ is read as either the ‘corporate culture’ of a Chinese company, the ‘national brand’ of Chinese businesses or, more generally, China’s modern culture and system or even China’s traditional civilisation.

Party-building as ‘corporate culture’ is, among other things, a method of neo-socialist corporatist labour management, principally of Chinese employees, but also spilling over among foreign employees. As part of the neo-socialist symbiosis of capitalism and socialism in China itself, the Party’s power monopoly keeps labour cheap, disciplined and abundant. Similarly, Party-building abroad serves global China’s version of corporatist labour relations that overcomes class struggle and unifies management, Chinese employees and foreign workers. The irony of Leninist principles being put to work to obscure class differences, avoid class struggle and facilitate the global expansion of Chinese capital is so thick it needs no further elaboration.

Party-building/Chinese culture is deployed as an organic part of the foreign extension of the Chinese system: Chinese projects, Chinese enterprises and Chinese people. As we saw at the start of this chapter, these are treated as being ‘inside the system’ – Chinese enclaves organised along Chinese principles, serving Chinese interests and dealing with their foreign environment on (hybridised) Chinese terms. Despite the CCP’s profession of the principle that Chinese SOEs and projects should abide by local laws and regulations, the extension of China’s system abroad has at least some of the makings of a new type of extraterritoriality, a state of exception that Chinese Nationalists and Communists fought so hard to abolish in China itself a century ago.

The foreign extension of Chinese Party-building culture also has a certain similarity with the global expansion of earlier great powers. The symbiosis of Party work and Chinese culture is an aspect, vector and instrument of Chinese globalisation, extending crucial parts of China’s system, society and economy across the world. As with European imperial powers in the nineteenth century and the US and Soviet Union hegemons of the twentieth century, global expansion presents its agents with a whole range of practical and principled challenges. Institutions, beliefs, concepts and strategies rooted in their own culture and society had to be transplanted into a world that they not merely wished to accommodate, but also wanted to make their own.

In contrast to the colonial or hegemonic practices of these earlier great powers, exporting Communist ideology or the imposition of China’s system of Party-led governance beyond the foreign enclaves of China’s system are all conspicuously absent. This, I believe, is neither an oversight of the sources used for this article nor an artefact of Chinese censorship. China does not want to rule the world or make the world Chinese. It wants to ensure that its interests are served – against those of other great powers if need be – and, as such, it does not hesitate to project its system, power and influence abroad to do so. This might be enough of a threat to many countries caught up in Chinese globalisation as it is; there is no need to imagine ulterior motives that are even worse.

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