Communist Party of China

The Communist Party of China (CPC), also known as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and ruling political party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Although nominally it exists alongside the United Front, a coalition of governing political parties, in practice, the CPC is the only party in the PRC, maintaining a unitary government and centralizing the state, military, and media. The legal power of the Communist Party is guaranteed by the national constitution, though due to the Party's Leninist roots, it stands above the law. The current party leader is Xi Jinping, who holds the title of General Secretary of the Central Committee.

Since becoming an institution of the state, aside from official commitment to communism and Marxism-Leninism, the party also has de facto unrecognized factions including consumerist and neoliberal figures including business people on the right who effectively support capitalism, as well as factions on the left that oppose the right in the party, and other factions.

The party was founded in July 1921 in Shanghai. After a lengthy civil war, the CPC defeated its primary rival, the Kuomintang (KMT), and assumed full control of mainland China by 1949. The Kuomintang retreated to the island of Taiwan, where it still remains to this day.

The party has fluctuated between periods of reformism and political conservatism throughout its history. Both before and after the founding of the PRC, the CPC's history is defined by various power struggles and ideological battles, including destructive socio-political movements such as the Cultural Revolution. At first a conventional member of the international Communist movement, the CPC broke with its counterpart in the Soviet Union over ideological differences in the 1960s. The Communist Party's ideology was redefined under Deng Xiaoping to incorporate principles of market economics, and the corresponding reforms enabled rapid and sustained economic growth.

The CPC is the world's largest political party, claiming over 80 million members at the end of 2010 which constitutes about 6.0% of the total population of mainland China. The vast majority of military and civil officials are members of the Party. Since 1978, the Communist Party has attempted to institutionalize transitions of power and consolidate its internal structure. The modern party stresses unity and avoids public conflict while practicing a pragmatic and open democratic centralism within the party structure.