The Chinese Communist Party, which celebrated its 80th anniversary on July 1, is giving itself a face-lift. In a speech marking the event, President Jiang Zemin said the party will grant membership to private business managers. That should come as no surprise, however, given that the CCP has been campaigning since early 2000 to drive home to the 1.2 billion Chinese the message that it "represents the fundamental interests of people from all walks of life."
Times have changed, indeed. In the early 1960s Beijing lambasted Moscow's claim that the Soviet Union represented "all the people," branding it a "revisionist" theory that broke the iron law of "proletarian dictatorship." Now Beijing is saying much the same thing as what Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev said at the time.
Capitalists are, by definition, enemies of communism, which represents the interests of the working class. That the CCP is now opening the door to business managers is proof that Chinese society is becoming diversified. However, the new membership policy does not immediately mean that the party is changing its stripe; it is only changing its image. Maybe it is trying to prolong its one-party rule by winning over this new breed of elites in China's "socialist market economy" and thereby preventing the growth of political opposition. Maybe it is also trying to smooth the way for Chinese entry to the World Trade Organization.