THE Communist Party of China (CPC) will open its 20th national congress on October 16. While Western media obsess about personalities, gossip and supposed intrigues, a sort of the West Wing meets I, Claudius, overlain with a not very well disguised coating of racist orientalism, this is actually a very serious political event.
How could it be otherwise? The CPC leads a country of some 1.4 billion people, the most populous on Earth. That country is the world’s second largest economy. By some methods of calculation, it may already be the largest.
As the CPC is a proudly Marxist party and leads a country engaged in a long-term socialist project, this five-yearly gathering is naturally of great interest to the communist and socialist movements.
