China’s Communists Pass Out Their Phone Numbers in Charm Blitz

Source: Bloomberg

June 30 (Bloomberg) -- China’s Communist Party handed out phone numbers and resumes to foreign media in an unprecedented gesture of openness for an organization that has ruled from behind a walled compound since Mao Zedong took power in 1949.

Eleven arms of the party sent spokespeople to a briefing in Beijing today, including the Organization Department, which appoints the heads of China’s biggest state-owned companies.

“The party wants to increase the openness of its work,” said Wang Chen, director of the international communication office. Doing so is important to “improve the party’s governing capacity,” he said.

Increasing transparency within a party that boasts 78 million members may reflect efforts to address increasing unrest among workers, the backbone of its legitimacy. Strikes over pay last month that affected Honda Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp. exposed growing dissatisfaction that China’s economic boom has left many people behind.

The strikes are a “kind of wake-up call, and they have finally realized -- I hope -- that they simply cannot stop the flood no matter how tall and strong their dam is,” said Huang Jing, a visiting professor at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. “They have done all this not necessarily because they want to, but they have to embark on this road given the rapidly changing situation in China.”

‘Confucius’ Centers

Today’s briefing is also part of a larger push by China to burnish its international image. The country is expanding the reach of the state-run media, increasing programming in English and other foreign languages and setting up a network of “Confucius” centers around the world, including the U.S., to teach the Chinese language and introduce outsiders to the nation’s culture.

Deng Shengming, the secretary general of the Organization Department, acknowledged that expediency, not ideology, persuaded some people to join the party in an attempt to further their careers. Some applicants “may not have very correct motives,” he said, adding that the party maintained a “very strict procedure” for selecting members.

Corruption, another bugbear afflicting the party, was also addressed. The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection is undertaking an investigation of the construction industry, said Wu Yuliang, its secretary general. Of 340,000 building projects probed since last July, 140,000 were found to have graft “problems,” and of those, 60,000 had been “dealt with,” he said without elaborating.

The Communist Party celebrates its 90th anniversary next year. China’s top leaders, including President Hu Jintao, live behind the oxblood-colored walls of the Zhongnanhai leadership compound in central Beijing. The party was founded in 1921 and came to power 28 years later when Mao led the communists to victory in a civil war.