The Communist Party and Politics

Understanding the Communist Party of China (CCP) is absolutely central to understanding what China as a country now is and how it functions. The CCP remains one of the least understood elements of the contemporary PRC. Part of the reason for this is that, these days at least, physically China looks, to those who visit it, as if it has a vibrant free market and a full-blown capitalist system. It seems highly contradictory therefore that there is only one party holding a monopoly of power — it is, after all, the Party — which still subscribes to Marxism ruling over all of this.