Xi Jinping at graduation
Hu Jintao was president of the Central Party School from 1993 to 2002. His likely successor, Xi Jinping, has been president since 2007. Even Mao Zedong served as president, in a much less grand institution, from 1942 to 1947.
I started looking a little deeper after I watched ‘Inside a Communist Party School’ from AlJazeera via the Shanghaiist. Watch it below.
Before this, I had not focused on the Central Party School or its roughly 2,700 lower-rung schools. Apparently, I am not alone as this abstract from the 2008 article, ‘Training China’s Political Elite: The Party School System,’ by David Schambaugh, shows:
One of the most important, but under-researched and least well understood, instruments of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the extensive national network of Party schools (approximately 2,700). They serve as the key institution of mid-career training and indoctrination for all Party cadres, many government cadres, some military officers and selected businessmen. In addition to its training and indoctrination functions, the Party school system (particularly the Central Party School in Beijing) is also an important generator of policy initiatives. Not all Party schools are stalwart institutions, with some being involved in corruption scandals, but on the whole they have come to play an increasingly important role in the CCPs rebuilding efforts in recent years.
Here’s more about the Central Party School from People’s Daily Online, in a 2007 article, ‘China’s Central Party School trains 50,000 officials in 30 years‘:
The Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) has trained more than 50,000 medium and high-ranking officials since 1978 when China initiated its reform and opening up policy.
All high-ranking Chinese officials, including provincial party chiefs, governors, ministers, generals, as well as mid-ranking officials who just take up their posts, must receive training from this school ranging from 3 months to 3 years.
The curriculums in this institute of higher learning, also known as the Central Party School, include not only Marxism masterpieces and Party principles, but also Western political theory, economics, and frontier issues of contemporary law, religion, military affairs, science and technology.
Seminars are held to discuss practical problems they come across during work, including how to increase farmers’ income and ways of getting investment for local development.
. . .
In the past several years, China has also sent its government officials to study abroad, for example, about 60 government officials have been selected each year to join in the two-month public administration program in the Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University since 2002.
. . .
The CPC Central Committee’s Party School currently has about 1,300 students on campus.
The Central Party School was established in 1933 in Ruijin of Jiangxi Province. Chinese top leaders, Mao Zedong and Hu Jintao were its presidents and China’s Vice-President Zeng Qinghong currently holds the position of the school’s president.
The official reason for allowing AlJazeera to film inside the Central Party School is that the Party wants to dispel some of the mystery surrounding the School, mostly for Chinese but also for foreigners. (In fact, the Australian Broadcasting Corp got there two years earlier and filmed a piece, ‘China gives peek inside elite school.’) The School also has a Chinese-language website, as well as guided tours.
And, while some of the mystery may be clearing, the Central Party School, as well as the system of 2,700 other Party schools, adds one more moving part to the complex machine of the Chinese Communist Party. And, one more moving part in the difficult job of trying to understand the Party.
