CPC expands presence in thriving private sector

LANZHOU -- The Communist Party of China (CPC) has been swiftly expanding its presence in the private sector, tripling its grassroots Party committees in non-public companies in the past decade.

More than 300,000 CPC grassroots committees have been set up in the country's private sector, up from less than 100,000 about 10 years ago, according to data released by the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) on Thursday.

The CPC grassroots committees among the non-public sector covered all 210,000 large private companies across the country and recruited more than 3.5 million CPC members, according to the SAIC.

The number of CPC members currently exceeds 80 million, which means that about six in every 100 Chinese people have joined the CPC in a country with a population of 1.3 billion.

The private sector, which includes more than 10 million private enterprises and nearly 40 million self-employed businesses, contributes to over 60 percent of the gross domestic product of the world's second-largest economy and creates about 90 percent of the country's new jobs, the SAIC data showed.

The rapid development of the private sector has posed new challenges for the CPC, as most of the non-public enterprises lack grassroots organizations to mobilize Party members.

To worsen the situation, many Party members have lost their affiliations with superior organizations and have become "invisible Party members."

In November 2002, the CPC convened its 16th National Congress to enshrine into the Party constitution the responsibilities and duties of establishing Party organizations among the private sector.

Accordingly, Party membership has been broadened to absorb outstanding personnel from the non-public strata.

"It is an increasingly pressing task for the Party to consolidate its class base and widen its public impact among the private sector," Chen Xiangqun, an official from the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee, said at a conference on Party-building in the private sector, which was held Thursday in Lanzhou, capital of northwest Gansu province.

Chen said the building of CPC organizations in private enterprises has consolidated the CPC's ruling basis in China and helped facilitate the "healthy development" of those enterprises.

"The establishment of CPC organizations in private companies has helped guarantee the legitimate rights and interests of employees and thus won the recognition of the vast number of staff and those forward-looking entrepreneurs," Chen said.

Party building in small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs), however, remains challenging, as only about one-fifth of SMEs and less than 1 percent of individually-owned businesses have CPC grassroots organizations, according to the SAIC data.

Zhou Bohua, head of the SAIC, said industry and commerce departments should seek to build community Party committees for individually-owned businesses to increase CPC coverage over more people.